ACIM Chapter 8. VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 1-2

ACIM Chapter 8. VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 1-2

VIII. The Body as Means or End

1 Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack. The ego’s definitions of anything are childish, and are always based on what it believes the thing is for. This is because it is incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees with the function it ascribes to it. It does not equate it with what it is. To the ego the body is to attack with. Equating you with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. The body’s condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. Functions are part of being since they arise from it, but the relationship is not reciprocal. The whole does define the part, but the part does not define the whole. Yet to know in part is to know entirely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different constellations. But knowledge never changes, so its constellation is permanent. The idea of part-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. Otherwise, there is no difference between the part and whole.

Jesus has been talking to us about the body as a communication device.

He has pointed out that we fail to use it to communicate when we use it to attack. Now he is helping us to understand how this works. The ego judges everything according to what it believes a thing is for. It sees the body as a way to attack, a tool for attack. If I believe I am the ego, then I will think the body is for attacking.

In sickness, the body becomes how I prove I am not invulnerable because it is so defenseless against sickness. I further use it to attack as I try to defend it by separating myself from my sick brothers so they don’t give me their sickness. I can use the body for attack through gossip and unkindness. Any use to which I put it that promotes the idea of separation is an attack.

I can try to hide the attack under softer words, but if I examine my feelings I find the truth. If I am annoyed, frustrated, angry, or fearful, if there is any thought of guilt, then I have used the body for attack. But there is a solution.

I can remember what Jesus said about this.

Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. There is no attack, but there is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness.

There is no attack. Attack is something we made up, like pain and guilt and death. It is not real. I can be free when I stop believing in these illusions, and my freedom lies only in not believing them. The problem I am attacking is an illusion, and the ego solution to the problem as attack is also an illusion. I choose not to believe in illusions, and I ask that the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking.

Jesus is also talking about relationships in another way. He tells us that in perception, the whole is built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different constellations. When I questioned how this works, I thought of my relationships. I have been married and divorced three times. I built relationships and then took them apart and rebuilt relationships with different men.

Within each relationship, I used ideas of what the relationship should look like and tried to arrange it thus. When I didn’t like the way that felt, I would envision it differently and try that. It makes me tired just to think of it. This is always going to be the way it works as long as we use perception rather than knowledge. We are told that there is no difference between part and whole in knowledge. That would be a relief!

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 2

2 The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation the body is seen as capable of shifting its allegiance from one to the other, making the concepts of both health and sickness meaningful. The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real use for it because it is not an end. You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. That is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something.

I have had many goals in my life, and I have achieved many of those goals. While I enjoyed the moment of achievement, it was fleeting, and I have never once felt completely satisfied. I simply look for the next goal. For a while, this just seemed normal, the way it was supposed to be, and I liked the challenge. Then it just got old and tiresome, and what little satisfaction there was waned. I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me, but this is just the way it is if the goal is set by the ego mind.

My life is different now.

More and more, I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me the goal He would have me pursue. No matter the form of the goal He gives me, the ultimate objective is the return to the Kingdom. I have been given the goal of becoming aware of my thoughts and of learning to discern the ego thoughts from the true thoughts. Then, of course, recognizing the meaningless, I had to learn to let them go. Each of those goals was for the purpose of returning my mind to the Kingdom.

He has given me the goal of seeing my brother as innocent despite appearances, of forgiving my projections onto my brother. As I withdrew my projections onto others, I transferred the guilt from someone else to myself. So, then my goal became one of forgiving my errors and seeing the innocence within my own mind.  But all of those goals were to join with my brothers in our innocence and so return to the Kingdom.

I used to think that winning and being right was the ultimate goal and the ultimate high, but that was a disappointment, too. Often, the cost of the “win” was far more than the value I had assigned it. Instead, the Holy Spirit gave me a different goal. He asked me to see that the only way I could win was to join instead of separate. I discovered that the joy of winning with a brother was truly satisfying. It was a strange realization at first, but now I can’t see how I ever believed otherwise. It was another step toward the ultimate goal of returning to the Kingdom.

In my defenselessness my safety lies.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that there is no value at all in defending myself, and in fact, it is in my defenselessness that my safety lies. The ego had given me many goals aimed at defending myself. I defended myself against disease, old age, bad people, financial loss, and an endless number of dangers. The Holy Spirit gave me goals that led me to understand I was only defending a body and that body was not real and had little to do with me.

And this led to the goal He has assigned me now. I am letting go of the idea of the body as anything other than a temporary illusion, useful only until the goal has been met. In so doing, I am learning to put aside the very limited vision of being a separated self. I am doing this a step at a time, but each step takes me to the one goal that He has given me. I am learning to accept my true nature, which is a brilliant and beautiful thing to behold.

The ego mind rebels against the idea of the body as unimportant and unreal. This vision is very scary to it, and it wants to stuff me back into the body and make me small again. I hear it. I even believe it a little. But I have glimpsed behind the veil, and I have seen too much to go back. Here is what happens in the ego part of the mind when I get close.

It reminds me that I have to keep living in this body for a while.

And I better set my mind on planning for that. I have to earn money. There is a house to keep in repair and so many other things that need my attention. The body itself is getting older, and I need to exercise it, buy it some more vitamins, and vaccinate it against disease. There is so much to do, and all of it is a defense against inevitable loss.

If it can’t keep my attention with these scare tactics, it brings out the big guns and suggests that the truth is not true. I am a fool for believing this nonsense about being the Son of God, and I am going to receive the ultimate punishment for this. If I am going to insist on staying with it, the ego mind swears that I cannot succeed, or at least that I cannot succeed this lifetime. Maybe later. When I believed this, it made me want to cry.

Then I remembered that this is just a little voice of separation.

And while it was made by me and served my purpose for a while, it is not the Voice of Truth. I can listen to the winy little complainer, or I can ignore it. I find it easiest to ignore it if I focus my attention on the truth. So, I read the beautiful passages from the Course, and I quiet my mind and let the Holy Spirit whisper the truth into my heart.

I am not the character in this dream but the dreamer, the constructor of the dream. I am an eternal and Divine being, the Son of God, and He loves me and believes in me. God created me, and I remain as He created me. And I have one goal, and that is to return my mind fully and completely to the Kingdom.

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