A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 294, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 294 My body is a wholly neutral thing.1. I am a Son of God. ²And can I be another thing as well?

Lesson 294

My body is a wholly neutral thing.

1. I am a Son of God. ²And can I be another thing as well? ³Did God create the mortal and corruptible? ⁴What use has God’s beloved Son for what must die? ⁵And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it. ⁶Its neutrality protects it while it has a use. ⁷And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. ⁸It is not sick nor old nor hurt. ⁹It is but functionless, unneeded and cast off. ¹⁰Let me not see it more than this today; of service for a while and fit to serve, to keep its usefulness while it can serve, and then to be replaced for greater good.

2. My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. ²And what is not created cannot be sinful nor sinless; neither good nor bad. ³Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made.

Jesus tells us that we are not these bodies, nor are we in these bodies.

These bodies are not real, they are just images we have made. They are neutral in that not being real they cannot be good or bad. It is how we use them that determines what they are to us. If I use this body to use others or to hurt others, it becomes a way to reinforce separation. It keeps the illusion going. If I use it to extend love and kindness, it is helpful in awakening us.

The main purpose the ego has for the body is to prove that we are not the Son of God. After all, how could we be all that the Course promises if we are these frail and weak bodies, made to die? If we further believe that God created us as bodies, we can hardly see God as loving us. Another way we use the body for the ego’s purposes is to punish ourselves. We think our errors are sins, and so try to atone by projecting pain and sickness onto the body.

Once we accept that the body is a neutral event and not anything of itself, it is interesting to see how we misuse it. We tend to either glorify or vilify the body. We glorify it as we strive relentlessly to keep it young and beautiful, even though this is doomed to fail. Another way we do this is to adorn it with beautiful things. Even in death, we worship the body, spending absurd amounts of money to make it look good. We then bury it in expensive boxes and continue to visit the body, bringing it flowers.

Placing our attention on the body, we distract ourselves from the mind.

But once we accept the truth about the body, we can use it in a different way. In fact, the body can now be used to bring us back to the mind, the only thing that can be healed. When my body is sick or suffering, I look to the mind to see what belief needs to be corrected. When I notice that I am placing undue emphasis on the body, how it looks, if it is the right size, and what others think of it, I know that my mind needs correction.

The body, like all other images we have made, can serve the purpose of bringing us back to reality if that is how I would use it. Whatever I seem to be experiencing in the body is actually what I am choosing with the mind. Bodies cannot on their own sin, cannot suffer, cannot attack. It is our desire for these things that is the cause of what the body seems to do, what it seems to be.

I have not yet seen my body as neutral, at least not consistently.

I really want to do this, but I find this particularly difficult. Of all the things I have given up and have allowed to be healed, this would seem to be easy, and yet it is not so in my mind. Evidently, there is still a strong identification with the body. Well, geez!

An area of concern for me is one I have mentioned several times. I want to control my weight. I don’t want to be obsessive about this, but I do want it. So, I asked Jesus how I can reconcile wanting a healthy weight with seeing the body as neutral. What came into my mind is that I can focus on healing the thoughts that lead to unhealthy eating. I can continue to notice when I crave sweets and when I eat out of anxiety and choose a different, more effective, and healthy solution.

This focus is on thought, and as the root cause inquiry reminds us, “I am always upset because of a belief in my mind.” What occurs with the body is the effect of our beliefs. Let me choose different beliefs, and the neutral body will reflect those beliefs. My body is never the problem, only my mind. Thank you, Jesus.

Here is a sentence that interests me.

⁷And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. ⁸It is not sick nor old nor hurt.

I accept that this is possible. Why would we keep the body if the mind is clear and our purpose is met? We would not need aging and sickness to end the body, we could just lay it aside. What a lovely way to end the story. One day, this will be the way it is done for us all.

Regina’s Tips

Yesterday, Regina asked us to do inquiry on a perception. My chosen perception was about my fear for my son as he battles insomnia. So, I used Root Cause Inquiry for this. Here is my process.

I am always upset because of a thought in my mind. I am willing to see the root cause of the upset. Also, I accept that “If my mind were perfectly healed, nothing would upset me, not even this.”

Why do I feel fearful for my son?

My mind wants to go to the story and say all the reasons that I am afraid for him, but I know that this is not helpful and will not bring me peace.

So, let me rephrase this. Why does it upset me that my son has insomnia?

I feel upset that I cannot do anything about this.

Why does it upset me that I cannot do anything about this?

It hurts me to see him suffer.

Why does it upset me to see him suffer?

It makes suffering seem very real to me and inevitable.

I’m going to stop here even though this is not the only place this can go. I’m stopping because this is a part that needs to be forgiven.

Holy Spirit, I give you this belief that suffering is real, and if it is real, there is no escaping it. I am willing to be corrected, and I ask that You purify my thinking on this. I cannot be at peace as long as I believe this. The peace of God is my one goal, so I willingly accept healing for this belief that is blocking the peace of God. I notice that the ego mind strongly objects to the idea that suffering is unnecessary and that it is possible to be happy regardless of situations. I choose not to believe the ego thoughts in my mind.

Regina asks us to go further with our inquiry in this way:

Write about your selected perception as if you are teaching someone else everything you know about it. Include everything you discovered as you inquired into this perception yesterday. Follow Adyashanti’s advice by writing all the way to the edge of what you know about this topic, and then wait for something else that you know is true. When that next true word, phrase, or sentence comes, write it down. Continue writing until you hit another boundary, and then wait again. Stay with this process until you know that you came to a conclusion, one that is recognized in your heart and soul as the complete answer to your question.

As for our body Regina says this:

The body is a neutral thing, which means it is open to interpretation. If we listen to the ego thought system, the body is “I.” However, if we listen to spiritual intuition, it is “of service for a while and fit to serve.”

Something she said that could be very helpful is this:

If there is a thought that the body is an obstacle to Self-realization, realize that thought is ego’s interpretation of a neutral thing and then shift to spiritual intuition’s interpretation instead.

This is a writing from around 12 years ago.

To understand what my body is not, I think I need to understand what I thought it was. At one time, I thought of my body as myself. I had no other thought, simply that my body/personality was who I was. I thought that when I died, I, as my body, went someplace. Now I don’t believe that. I went through a period when I thought my body was my enemy, an embarrassment, the home of guilt. It seemed to be proof that I made something to take the place of God’s creation. I don’t look at it like that anymore, at least not consciously though some of that is left.

Now I understand that my body is a communication device. However, I become confused about what communication is. Yesterday for a while, I thought it was communication to use words to correct my brother. This is an example of miscommunication. I have missed the chance to communicate and so have used the body for something that it was not intended.

What I have noticed is that when I do this, I often experience a physical reaction in the body, some effect of stress. I have put stress on my body by using it for a purpose other than it was made, and the effect is a headache or an upset stomach. Long-term misuse produces long-term effects.

I misuse my body in other ways as well.

I give it the purpose of bolstering my self-esteem by decorating it. Or I give it the purpose of proving my unworthiness by allowing it to go unattended and thus showing the world a picture of unattractiveness which I then claim is myself. I use it to prove to myself that I lack willpower when I say I want to lose weight and then fail to do so as if it were possible for the Son of God to create something He does not want or fail to create what he chooses. In so doing, I am using the body to lie.

I use bodies to create the illusion of sharing and oneness. The illusion is supposed to satisfy me so that I do not look to actual oneness and thus lose the desire to be separate. This would be death to the ego, which makes its home in the body. I substitute neediness for love and call the needed body to me.

When the body places itself near me, I feel relief and call that happiness. I allow my vision to become so myopic that I believe when the body is absent, so is the one I love. How could I believe this when I know that the one I love is in the same mind I am in and, thus, is one with me?

When I am really desperate to maintain my illusion of separation, I resort to sickness.

Physical pain is so compelling it is very hard to remember that I am not the pain I feel. I am not the body through which I experience the pain. But if I choose to have an intense experience, it is easy to forget that I am not the body.

Once a while back, I caught myself choosing sickness to avoid the truth. I had a revelatory experience in which, for just a moment, I knew something about who I am. It was not something that I could translate into words, just a knowing. Within moments I had a fever and was throwing up. It had the effect of turning my attention from that experience and focusing it on the body. Leaning over the toilet bowl, I felt like a body and this, of course, was the purpose and the reason I chose to be sick.

But here is the thing; I am so on to myself. I know what I am doing even as I do it. Within moments I knew the purpose of the sickness. I knew I had done it. I made a half-hearted attempt to convince myself that I had caught the same bug that was going around and that my granddaughter just recovered from. But I knew the truth.

I had to let it play out, but my recovery was remarkably quick once I looked with the Holy Spirit at what I had done. And even the illness itself lost its immediacy. I would throw up and then laugh at myself. That must be very frustrating for the ego part of the mind that had always depended on a good old-fashioned sickness to bring me to my knees.

Indeed, I am the Son of God.

How can I be a body? I cannot, and I learn to remember this truth as I pay attention. I have spent so much of my life living unconsciously that it seems to take great vigilance to stay alert, a lot of work. But it becomes easier as I practice it. Today will be a good day for the Sonship as I use it to bring up into the light whatever remaining body beliefs that I hold dear.

I have been having problems with digestion and telling myself that I just need to find the right combination of foods. How funny is that? What I need is to find the right combination of beliefs! Please look with me, Holy Spirit, at all my feeble attempts to hold onto the body as home to the ego, as proof of separation and sin. As I learn to release these wrong-minded thoughts, I will free the body to be only a channel for love.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 294 click here.

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