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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 1 10- 24-14

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. If I listen to the ego voice I will use the body to attack.

I started thinking about this and opened my mind to the ways I use the body to attack. I see that sickness is an attack. The body becomes the way 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 use it to further attack as I look to the ego for solutions to sickness rather than to God for the only Solution.

I use the body to attack when I move it away from someone who has offended me. If I gossip about someone, or say something unkind, I am using it for attack. If I use the body to attract or repel someone for purposes other than love, it is an attack. If I use the body to prove I could not be holy, it is an attack.  Any use to which I put it that promotes the idea of separation is an attack.

Sometimes I try to hide the attack under nice words, but if I examine my feelings and notice that I am annoyed, or 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. So as I use the body for attack, I also remind myself of the truth. 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 purify my thoughts and remove all those thoughts that illusion could be true.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, Paragraph 16 10- 23-14

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, P 16
16 Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true. Free your mind from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility lies your only hope for release. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. There is no attack, but there is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is extension. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to creation in God.

There are two sentences that feel really meaningful to me this morning. One is that freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. I love this for its simplicity. Yes, it can feel difficult not to believe in what seems so real, but then that is the purpose of the illusion, to feel real. So when I experience the effects of believing in the illusion, I ask the Holy Spirit to remove those thoughts from my mind, the thoughts I believe that could not be real.

I felt harassed yesterday. There seemed to be too much work for one day and I felt overwhelmed. I noticed that I was projecting. These are illusions. They affected me because I believed them. I could easily have questioned them, but I didn’t. Normally, when I feel like I have too much to do, I ask that Holy Spirit decide for me what to do and what to let go. I remind myself that it is just a thought in my mind that I have more to do than I can do. For some reason, yesterday I didn’t question my thoughts and so I suffered until I changed my mind about that.

The second sentence that stands out to me says, do not arrest your thought in this world. When I accepted the idea that I was harassed and overwhelmed and did not question that thought, I arrested my thought in this world. When I finally realized what I was doing, and I asked for correction, the barriers that seemed to hold me hostage to my suffering fell away. I was in immediate peace and I was given ideas that corrected some of the errors I made while confused.

What I have discovered is that I can always choose to not believe the illusion. Sometimes it feels hard and I have to talk myself into letting go. Sometimes I have to ask for help over and over, not because I have to talk the Holy Spirit into helping me, but because I have to talk myself into accepting the help.  But this is something that I can do.

I can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, free my mind from the belief in illusions and the process is very simple. I notice I am not happy and I ask that my mind be healed, then I allow the aberrant thought to be removed from my mind. I remind myself that I am not this body or this story. I am spirit. I am the Thought of God, created by Him, like Him. This silly moment cannot be reality. Then I allow my mind to fly free of this world.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, Paragraph 15 10- 22-14

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, P 15
15 Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God’s. When yours is unified it is His. Believe you can interfere with His purpose, and you need salvation. You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore it is not true. No more are any of its seeming results. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him because you have condemned yourself. Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can have no results.

God’s purpose is joy and when I interfere with that purpose, I have condemned myself. The good news is that this is not possible. While I believe it is, I will suffer, but since only God’s purpose has reality and what is His is mine, I can be saved from my suffering. Its very unreality is my salvation. To know that I am saved only requires my desire to know this.

It is God’s Will that I be saved from my mistaken beliefs and so everything I need to have this is provided for me. When I was ready for it, I was led to A Course in Miracles. When I needed a new teacher one would appear. When I needed to hear the truth in a different way, it was given to me in the form of a different course. When I was ready for a more direct experience, I was shown how I was to listen to the Voice within.

Recently, I have had a different experience. I am approaching the one mind, and the part of my mind that resists this is insistent that I not make this approach. The resistance took the form of doubt that led to depression. I have a very clear understanding that depression is not part of my life now even though it used to be very much a part of my identity as I saw it. So this was confusing and upsetting to me.

I wasn’t deeply depressed as I used to be, and for most of the day it was not there. But it kept occurring and my doubts turned into fear. The biggest difference was that I did not fall headlong into it, but remained in touch with my healed mind, constantly asking for help. I was led to the simple passage from the Course where Jesus says that I only need to ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me and it will be done. So I started that practice.

It quickly deepened until I was asking that He decide for me even what I was thinking and how I felt, and I realized that in so doing I was letting go of the ego mind altogether, and allowing my Self to rise in its place. At the same time, the dying ego was filling my mind with doubts and fear and this kept the depression in place. Finally, a couple of days ago I told Jesus I needed help, that I could not overcome this alone and I didn’t know what to do about it.

In typical miraculous fashion, the answer came that very day in a form I was certain to notice. Nouk Sanchez posted a message on my Facebook page. The message said, “Myron ...just got a nudge to share this with you.” This is the link she gave me: http://undoing-the-ego.org/noukblog/?p=1143. And from this there developed a conversation with Nouk that she put on her website: http://undoing-the-ego.org/noukblog/?p=1156.

Everything has changed in those two short days. I felt the doubts and fears come to me and I realized how unreal they were. I easily let that go and I turned my attention to the truth. Even though it has only been a couple of days it all feels so different now. It is also very important to me that I said to Jesus that I needed help, and he nudged Nouk to share with me what she had written. I see Nouk’s writings all the time and sometimes I read them, but often I don’t take the time. Because she said this was a nudge (and mostly because I felt Jesus nudging me to read) I stopped what I was doing and read it. We are not alone. We are guided. We are helped. Whatever we need is provided.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, Paragraph 13 10- 20-14

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, P13
13 The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God’s joyous Teacher and learning His lessons. To see a body as anything except a means of communication is to limit your mind and to hurt yourself. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind’s purpose is one. Attack can only be an assumed purpose of the body, because apart from the mind the body has no purpose at all.

I know the signs that I am using the body for separation instead of for communication. I see that this is so when I feel depressed, or when I feel angry. I know I am doing this when I feel confused and when I notice that I feel guilty or am making someone else guilty in my mind. I know it is happening when I judge, even if I don’t express the judgment aloud.

So what do I do when I notice I feel depressed? What do I do when I see that I am limiting what the Holy Spirit can heal because I am holding onto my grievances and my wrong minded thinking? Here is something I wrote earlier in this study of the Text.

“Here is what happens each time I bring a grievance to the Holy Spirit. I sit with Him and tell Him all about it. I show Him why I believe the problem is real and has serious consequences. I let Him see my rage. Or I let Him see how frightened I am or how hurt. Then I ask Him to heal my mind and He says, “It’s OK, Honey. It’s just a bad dream. You are sleeping and in your sleep you dreamed this happened. It’s time to wake up now.”

So this is what I do. I become transparent to the Holy Spirit. I express fully what I am feeling and thinking. I show him my rage, my fear and my guilt. I ask Him to help me, to remove from my mind the beliefs that are causing me to hang onto the dream. I ask Him to help me wake up. And I ask Him to decide for me, even asking him to decide what I should think about a certain thing. I ask Him to decide for me how I should feel about it. I am choosing to surrender completely, the ego, and allow my Self to rise up and take its place in my mind.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, Paragraph 12 10 17-14

VII. The Body as a Means of Communication, P12
12 To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by one purpose. This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in which it can be really understood. To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal is a fundamental confusion that blocks the understanding of both. Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it. This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds, and does not arrest itself in its extension. This arrest is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind’s function.

Jesus tells us that to communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. I was talking to a friend about something that was happening in her life. She was having problems with her family and this was not a new thing for her. She often saw herself stuck in the same place, confused about what to do about it. And she eventually comes to me to talk about it.

Here is what happens in my mind. I wonder why she asks me for help when she has no intention of listening to me. I think she should let this problem go finally. I can’t see why she wants to hold onto it because it is so painful to her and the solution is so simple. I wonder what I am supposed to say this time that would make a difference. I wonder if I will have time to eat lunch before my next appointment.

That is the ego chatter that I hear going on in my mind. That is attack and attack is separation. When I think like this and when I believe my thoughts, the mind is arresting itself at the body. I am this body, and this body has interests apart from that other body. It judges and resents, and is impatient. In doing these things, the body is made sick, because the mind misuses it.

At one time this seemed perfectly normal to me. In fact, I couldn’t imagine seeing it differently. I looked at someone else and really saw someone else. Now I cannot imagine looking at someone else and not knowing, at least on some level, that there is no one else. There is only the Son of God and we are all part of the Son.

When my friend called me to rehash the same tired old problem, I heard the thoughts in my mind and I completely disregarded them. It was like someone left the TV on in the other room. I could hear it, but I had no interest in it. I listened to my friend. I reminded her of the truth. I loved her. I knew that it doesn’t matter how many times she needs to look at that problem. She will look at it until she is ready to let it go and how long it takes is a non-issue.

I will play my part as listener and I will let the Holy Spirit speak through me as the reminder she came to receive. In my patience and my love and my willingness to play my part, and in my willingness to see my friend as part of my self, I am allowing the mind to extend past the body. I am joining and so I am communicating. I am communicating with words but that is not the important part. I am communicating through my willingness to allow love to flow between us unimpeded by a need for anything to be different than it is.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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