ACIM Chapter 7. V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, P 1, 2. The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for. That is a decision.
V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind
1 The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego’s decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration, but the Holy Spirit’s decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.
It is amazing how wrong we get everything. The body is just a tool, a framework for developing abilities. This is a far cry from the meaning I had given my body. I saw it as me, thereby making it necessary in order for me to exist. If my body died, I died. While alive, my body represented what I believed about myself and it told others what I was. When my body was sick, I resented it as if the body made itself sick.
This all seems so insane to me now. It is as if I believed the computer I used to share this information, create my website, and record videos was me. As if, when the computer got old, I got old. Or when the computer broke, I was broken, and it was the computer’s fault. How I feel about the computer and what I believe about it is a decision I make. In the same way, how I feel about the body and what I believe about it is a decision. I no longer think of the body as me. I’m saner now.
Most of us begin our path by becoming aware of our ego thoughts and behaviors.
We begin to understand that they are not making us happy. Then we learned that there is an option, and we spent some time deciding to allow that option. Typically, we choose God sometimes, and at other times, we will defend our illusions because we are not ready to give them up. We can spend a lot of time going back and forth on this.
What must happen eventually is that we embrace the Holy Spirit’s use of the body as a true communication device at all times. When we realize that we have one function, that our life has one purpose, and that is to wake up, we begin to make the one choice in every situation. We choose to bring every dark thought to the Light, defending none of them.
Until we fully embrace this choice, we remain an unhealed healer, sometimes being effective and then falling back into darkness again. My daughter is an English teacher. Imagine how confusing it would be for her students if today, she taught you had to put a period at the end of each statement, and then tomorrow, she taught that you could ignore that rule when you wanted to. She would not be a very successful teacher, and her students would leave her class confused. Eventually, she would be confused herself because, teaching confusion, she would learn confusion.
In the same way, we will awaken more quickly if we teach a consistent lesson.
Our minds will be healed if we unfailingly choose to use the body as a communication device rather than a separation device. This is simple since the only true communication is Love. It is a choice, and the more consistent we are in our choices, the more effective we will be as both learners and teachers.
Do I think someone is ugly? Is that love? No, and so it is not something I want to use this body to communicate. Do I want to project my unwanted feelings onto others? Is that Love? No, it is fear, and I don’t want to teach fear. Teaching fear guarantees I keep fear since what I teach is what I learn. When I run into someone arrogant, I can resent their attitude, or I can love them. It is a decision.
V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, P 2
2 Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as a teacher and a learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.
I read this paragraph and thought I understood it, but then I was guided to read it again more carefully.
Only minds communicate.
Obviously, I have no idea what true communication is because I thought communication was what we did when we talked to each other. On more careful examination of this idea, I see how flawed it is. What I say to you may or may not be true, and even if it is true, it may or may not be truth. In other words, I may be saying what I believe is true but be wrong about it. Or I may be saying what I have convinced myself is true when all along I am hiding the truth even from myself.
Perhaps what I am saying is for you alone. My words to your ears. In this case, it is not true communication because it is limited and it separates. Limitation and separation have no place at all in the Kingdom. Words can be symbols for the truth, but always, even under the best of circumstances, they will fall short of true communication. When we speak to each other, body to body, it is only vaguely similar to communication.
The impulse to communicate is the impulse to create.
What passes for most communication is chatter. We speak on the surface of things because we cannot find words for what really matters, and yet that impulse to communicate remains. So, we try. We want to communicate; we want this very badly, and we try to communicate even when it is very hard to do.
Have you ever tried to express something important and just couldn’t find words for it? I have had a few mystical experiences, and I don’t know if words exist that could allow me to describe what actually happened and how it affected me. Yet I try anyway. I feel a strong need to communicate this, so I give them words even though the words only diminish the experience.
In our true state, communication is forever unbroken. What is known by one is known by all. We don’t need to fumble for words, and disingenuousness is neither possible nor desired. How deeply freeing and satisfying it must be to communicate truly.
Communication is also the impulse to create.
This is why we long to communicate and that we do so even when communication is so severely limited. We are creators, and the impulse to create is not diminished because we pretend to be something else. While we are in denial about our true nature, we cannot create, but the impulse remains, and so we try. We struggle to communicate, and what we make is a poor substitution for creation.
The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. The ego can do nothing about the impulse to communicate, so it tries to convince us that this is the purview of the body, and we accept this without question. We believe that we can only communicate through speaking words. We believe that we can only create with our hands.
In accepting these limitations, we accept the ego belief that we do not need the mind and that separation is real and we are bodies. How very small we make ourselves and our world. In believing that the body is sufficient unto itself, what we think no longer matters to us, and all is about behavior. We have taught ourselves to believe the unbelievable, and that as long as we don’t act on our dark thoughts, they don’t really matter, and only behavior counts.
Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe.
I remember the first time, as a young teenager, I learned the hard lesson that people don’t always say what they believe. I walked up to a group of girls at school, and one of them said to me that I looked really nice in my new outfit. Later, I discovered that she really meant that she thought my outfit was pretty awful.
People’s actions are not always congruent with their thoughts. Sometimes, it is deliberate, as it was with the girl in my class, and sometimes, it is unconscious. Sometimes, it is meant to hurt, but often, it is meant to hide what we think of as our awful secrets or to put on a front designed to convince others that we are what they expect us to be.
We want to be liked and loved, and yet we don’t feel likable and loveable. When we notice the dark thoughts in our minds, we think we will never be accepted if people know what is happening there. We imagine that our ego is more awful than everyone else’s when, actually, we all share the same ego.
This is one of the reasons I often share my ego thoughts as teaching examples.
I will no longer hide behind appropriate behavior. I will expose the ego thoughts that would otherwise keep me believing that we are different. To be a good teacher and a good learner, I must be consistent in what I teach. This means a change must occur at the level of the mind, not at the level of behavior.
All of my life, I had tried to bring my behavior into accord with what was expected of me. I wanted my behavior to teach what I wanted people to believe about me, even though it was not the truth. Then, I learned to allow my mind to be healed, knowing that the mind always informs behavior. A healed mind teaches healing consistently, thus assuring that I am a good learner and a good teacher.
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