ACIM Chapter 8. VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, P 6-8

ACIM Chapter 8. VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, P 6-8

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication P 6

6 Rejoice, then, that of yourself you can do nothing. You are not of yourself. He of Whom you are has willed your power and glory for you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you accept it for yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but you believe you have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name’s sake, because His Name is yours.

I am intrigued by the last sentence, “Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name’s sake, because His Name is yours.” How do I remain hidden? I hide my true nature beneath a thin veneer of ego. So, I see myself as weak and vulnerable. I pretend to be sad, fearful, and filled with guilt. I refuse to look at the power and glory that remain in me because God put it there. Now, the Son of God is hidden, and all I see is my little made-up self. Now, I think I am hidden from God.

This smallness is not God’s Will for me. He wants me to know my Self and to live from that Self. He wants me to be joyful and peaceful. My Father wants me to return to full, unbroken communication with Him. If the ego was truly a creation and I was actually alone as this self, I could not do this. I would be stuck in the maddening cycle of wrong-minded thinking. But I am not alone.

I am joined with my brothers, with Jesus, with my God.

I have His Voice as a permanent part of me, guiding, healing, and comforting me. Through His Voice, God speaks to me all through the day, gently reminding me of my Home and my true nature. I am one with All That Is, and there is nothing I can do about that. In this Oneness, I am holy; I am powerful. And I am glorious! I can blind myself to this truth, but I cannot change it, and through the power and glory that was given me, I can come out of hiding as soon as that is my desire for myself and all my brothers.

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication P 7

7 The Bible says, “The Word (or thought) was made flesh.” Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical. Yet thought is communication, for which the body can be used. This is the only natural use to which it can be put. To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.

Again, in this paragraph, I am reminded that I can make form through my belief, but I cannot make it real. My thoughts are powerful, and what I believe is true for me, and so becomes my experience. I am perfectly safe, however, because they do not become reality. Still, my experience can be one of extreme suffering if I misuse the power of thought, and real or not, this is not something I am willing to continue. That is why I am a student of A Course in Miracles. It is why I am willing to be led to the truth that has always been in my mind but which I have hidden from myself with the illusions I made.

I begin to understand what is happening.

I am also, again, being reminded that I have made an illusion of a body and have used that body to prove to myself that I am separate. Because I am ready to awaken from this dream, the Holy Spirit is helping me to use the same body to guide me from the illusion. Instead of using the body to prove I am separate, I am learning to use it to prove I am one with all other Sons of God. I do this as I use the body for communication. As he says, this is the only natural use to which it can be put.

I use the body to maintain the illusion of separation when I judge others as if they really were others. I use it for communication when I look past the behavior and the visual impact of my brothers and sisters and see the light of their being instead. It is a seeing that has nothing to do with the eyes. It has taken me a long time, it seems, to experience this. I began by trying to see something different with my body’s eyes, and this didn’t work. Then, I would ask to see more or to see differently, but I could only see what I believed. I could only see in others what I saw in myself.

As I continued to accept the Atonement consistently my mind began to heal.

I was treated with moments of clarity in which I saw only love everywhere I looked. Now, it is expanding so that it is happening more often. I am also very much more aware of when I am judging or even when I am off my game and feeling isolated. It feels uncomfortable and wrong, and I want to move out of that feeling. I think that one big difference is that, more often than not, I am automatically rejecting the ego judgments that flow through the mind. And what is really there simply shows itself to me. I think this is using the body for communication.

I have known for a while now that I have a purpose.

And no matter what kind of process I was passing through or how confused I became in my ego mind, I remained true to that purpose. So, while I have slipped in and out of ego thinking, I have not forgotten for long what I am here to do. Maybe this guiding vision of purpose is what alerts me to the misuse of the body.

When I return, however long or however briefly, to using the body for separation purposes, I have moved away from my purpose and I feel that. It is like being unmoored, drifting, and lost. And because I have been exposed to the certainty and safety of the Holy Spirit’s purpose for me, I feel the loss acutely. I return my mind to Him as quickly as I can, and gladly give my body over to His use.

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication P 8

8 There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as a curriculum he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he must become depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately why the world itself is depressing. The Holy Spirit’s curriculum is never depressing, because it is a curriculum of joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is because the true goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.

Why is the curriculum of the world depressing? It teaches me that the way to be happy is to win, and this keeps me in constant competition with everyone. I cannot win every time, so I can only be happy sometimes. Even when I win, what is my prize? It is a short adrenaline rush, bragging rights for a bit. That is the most I can hope for. Is this a prize worth sacrificing perfect peace, eternal happiness, and unbroken communication with God? Is it worth sacrificing Heaven?

In winning, I lose. I lose everything worth having. I am whole, complete; in God and with my brothers, I am an eternal Divine being. But to win over a brother, I must be separate from all that. I must be an individual, separate, small, and vulnerable self who sometimes wins and sometimes loses. How is that a goal that I would want? And when I achieve it, what have I achieved? And the achievement is always momentary, followed by fear of loss. This is why the curriculum of the world is depressing.

I cannot learn the world’s curriculum because it is senseless. 

It promises me happiness, but there is no happiness in the world. The world’s curriculum promises riches only to teach me fear of loss. It promises love, only to teach me to defend against the thing I want. At its best, it gives me a goal and means to achieve the goal, and once achieved, I realize it is not worth the effort. I am no happier and only more discouraged.

The Holy Spirit’s goal has always brought me happiness, and it is true happiness. He shows me the beliefs in my mind that are hurting me. As I let go of them, I discover what they hide from me, my true self. I have, step by step, won for myself peace and joy and, in so doing, discovered there is no one to compete with. My joy and peace grow as I give what I receive. My win is everyone’s win.

There can be no loss because I am winning what was always mine and what could never be lost. It comes at no cost to me because I give up nothing of value to have it. Because the win is inevitable and the prize is always mine anyway, there is no fear of loss. And for the same reason, the joy of the win is eternal.

So, if I feel depressed I know I have lost sight of my goal.

I have a purpose, and the ego part of my mind did not choose that purpose. My purpose was given to me by God. My goal is to awaken from the dream of separation. Knowing my goal and having a clear vision of how to achieve it, I walk steadily toward the Kingdom.

When I become distracted by some lesser goal that will not fulfill my purpose, I temporarily lose my way. I know this has happened because I am not at peace, and happiness is like a light that flickers on and off to be extinguished and leave me in darkness finally. But even from this darkened frame of mind, I can rediscover my purpose because the Holy Spirit holds it for me in constant and patient readiness, knowing I must return my attention to the only thing that promises me unending joy and peace.

This was once a hope in my mind, but through choosing God over and over and being answered every time, through witnessing that answer and experiencing the love that it brings into my awareness, hope has become a certainty.

To heal the mind, I have found it most helpful to let go of the story and focus on the beliefs that are causing the distress. Sometimes they are not obvious, so I use Regina Dawn Akers Root Cause Inquiry. To learn about this process, CLICK HERE.