Together, We Light the Way

Click link to go to:
Together We Light the Way Index

Study of the Text, Chapter 8, VIII. The Body as Means or end, P 6. 10-31-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 6
6 Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same situation, does not bother to analyze it at all. If data are meaningless there is no point in analyzing them. The function of truth is to collect information that is true. Any way you handle error results in nothing. The more complicated the results become the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which premises give rise in order to judge them truly.

I am trying to remember what it feels like to be really sick so that I can bring these ideas into my mind and visualize them first from ego and then from Holy Spirit. It occurs to me that this is just as true when applied to someone else since there is no one else. So I am thinking about my son who has experienced sickness and injury in the last few years.

When he was very sick and we didn’t know why, I was very frightened that I would lose him. I pushed him into seeing one doctor after another, trying to find the cause and so find a solution. My fear drove my thoughts and my actions. My fear kept me from recognizing the nothingness of the sickness.

In the end, I finally desired peace more than I desired anything else and so that is what I received. In the end, the doctors never discovered a cause or a solution, but his body recovered anyway. The Holy Spirit didn’t need to take x rays or MRIs. It didn’t need to do anything with the body because the body was not the cause and so the body could not be the solution.

“The function of truth is to collect information that is true.”

So in the end, the Holy Spirit showed me the truth that sickness is an illusion and is not the Will of God, therefore it cannot exist. It collected the truth for me and showed it to me.

Only the mind can be sick and only the mind can be healed. When my mind was ready to accept healing, my son’s body was healed. This is not really surprising when it is remembered that there is only one of us and that the idea of body is in the one mind. It is not necessary that I accept healing once and for all to experience a miraculous healing of the body, mine or someone else’s. It is only necessary that I have a moment of pure clarity, a whole hearted desire, and in that holy instant, the miracle occurs.

My son also had a back injury that has not healed, even with surgery. He suffers so much and the ego mind has gone all over the place with this. I feel guilty because I have not been able to do anything about this. His pain triggers the belief in pain in my mind and I suffer with him. When I am away from him I get on with life and don’t think about him and his pain and then I feel guilty for that. I have had so much guilt and fear about his suffering that I project it onto him and resent him for this, and make the whole thing his fault which of course only increases the guilt.

As we have been learning in this section, sickness is caused by the belief that the body is for attack and the belief that I am the body. Everything that the ego says about this situation is that I am guilty. Guilt is an attack. I am using the body for the purpose of attack when I choose to believe in guilt. We are also learning that a sick body does not make any sense. Jesus says this:

Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego’s interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premises sickness is inconceivable.

Here is what I have learned so far from this experience with my son.

Guilt is an attack whether it is directed inward or outward.

I am innocent and so is my son.

Sickness (pain, suffering, death) is inconceivable.

If I perceive sickness it is because I have mistaken myself for a body that is for attack.

Healing is of the mind.

When I notice my mind looking for solutions outside itself, and when I notice I believe the guilt thoughts in the mind, and when I notice the desire to project (attack), I realize my mind is sick and I need to be healed. I ask for healing and accept the Atonement to the degree I am able.

I am learning that healing that is requested is given. I am learning to disregard appearances and see with Christ Vision the answer that is before me, not the illusory effects of the mistaken thoughts.

I am learning to forgive myself for not doing this perfectly.

My mind is being healed and the more this happens the more I desire this healing above all else. The world is an accurate projection of the beliefs in my mind, so whatever I see in the world (including a sick son) is healed within my mind because that is where they originated. It is being reinforced in my mind that I need do nothing. I let go of the guilt which drives the fear which provokes the need to attack, and all that is left is peace.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text, Chapter 8, VII. The Body as Means or End, P 5. 10-30-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 5
5 It is still true that the body has no function of itself, because it is not an end. The ego, however, establishes it as an end because, as such, its true function is obscured. This is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose sight of the function of everything. A sick body does not make any sense. It could not make sense because sickness is not what the body is for. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego’s interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premises sickness is inconceivable.

Understanding that a sick body makes no sense because sickness is not what the body is for, helps me to loosen the hold the belief in sickness has on me. When my body is sick, I am reminded that this could only appear to be true if I accept the ego’s use for the body. The ego thinks the body is for attack and that I am a body.

To further simplify, I understand that attack occurs only where there is the belief in guilt. If I believe that someone is guilty I have attacked that one. If I attack anyone I have attacked myself, or to put it another way, if I see anyone as guilty, I have attacked myself. None of this could happen unless I thought I was a body. Only bodies attack and if I did not believe any of us were bodies, I would never see guilt.

This paragraph is very important because Jesus is telling us that if we did not use the body to attack and if we did not believe we are bodies, then sickness would be inconceivable. I could throw away my medicine and never see another doctor if I let go of the idea that I would attack my brother or myself. To know myself as spirit and never to confuse myself with the body would insure perfect health for the body.

The next time I feel sick or am in pain, I will remember that I must have used this body for attack, otherwise it would not be possible for it to be sick. The solution must be forgiveness. Actually, I know this. I rarely get sick, and when I do, I know what caused it. So I ask for the Atonement for my mistaken belief that I am a body, and I ask for the Atonement for the belief that attack has any value at all.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 4 10- 29-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 4
4 It is hard to perceive sickness as a false witness, because you do not realize that it is entirely out of keeping with what you want. This witness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy because you have not seriously cross-examined him. If you had, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego’s views. A more honest statement would be that those who want the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect from the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who would disagree with its case, nor does the Holy Spirit. I have said that judgment is the function of the Holy Spirit, and one He is perfectly equipped to fulfil. The ego as a judge gives anything but an impartial judgment. When the ego calls on a witness, it has already made the witness an ally.

The ego says that sickness proves I am vulnerable and so of course I could not be the Son of God. But Jesus says that sickness is a false witness. What sickness really witnesses to is that I want to prove I am vulnerable and so could not be God’s Son. I am reminded that I but do this to myself, and so sickness is done by me, to me. I am reminded of Lesson 152, which tells me that no one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants.

I will always find the witnesses I want to find. If I want to support and uphold the ego thought system, I will find witnesses to do so. Sickness is just one of those witnesses. If I want to find witnesses to the strength and power that are mine as an extension of God, then I will find those. In fact, I find that even sickness can be a witness to my power as I see that in sickness I have found a way to make even God’s Son appear weak and helpless. What I see and how I see it are both up to me according to which part of the mind I use as judge, ego or Holy Spirit.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 3 10- 28-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 3
3 It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego’s belief in the body as an end, because it is synonymous with the belief in attack as an end. The ego has a profound investment in sickness. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego’s firm belief that you are not invulnerable? This is an appealing argument from the ego’s point of view, because it obscures the obvious attack that underlies the sickness. If you recognized this and also decided against attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego’s stand.

I have decided that sickness is a defense against God in every case. No matter what kind of sickness I am experiencing, what pain or discomfort, I know that it is the symbol of an attack thought in my mind. I still hear the ego suggest reasons for the sickness. For instance if I have a headache, the ego mind checks the barometric pressure. It thinks about what I have eaten that might have triggered the headache. It suggests that the headache is the result of stress from dealing with a difficult person.

I have learned to ignore this chatter as completely irrelevant. The headache is a projection of an attack thought. That is the cause every time. I have an attack thought and I want it away from me so I project it outward and use it to prove I am blameless because someone or something else is to blame. A pain pill might bring me temporary relief simply because the pain pill is a magical solution I decided on, but no magical solution will heal me.

I am healed as I give up attack thoughts. Attack thoughts are interesting, too. I attack someone at work because he caused me a problem. I might say something to him or I might just attack in my own thoughts but it is the same either way. I see the attack and I recognize that I am never upset for the reason I think. I ask the Holy Spirit for clarity and eventually, I am led to the belief that I am separate from God. That is the real attack thought, the one that sources all other attack thoughts.

Here is how it is working for me. I started out watching my mind for attack thoughts, and as I found one I would use a forgiveness process to undo it and to accept the Atonement in that situation. Slowly, as more and more was undone in my mind, I began to see the end game. I saw that the real problem was the belief I was separate from God and that idea began to unravel. As it did so, and continues to do so, my reality is being revealed to me. I am beginning to remember what I am and attack in any form loses its appeal as it loses its purpose.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 2 10- 27-14

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. I have enjoyed the moment of achievement, but then it is over and I have never once felt completely satisfied. I simply look for the next goal. For awhile this just seemed normal, the way it was supposed to be, and I liked the challenge. Then it just got old, 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 because 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, of learning to discern the ego thoughts from the true thoughts, and of learning that I don’t value the ego thoughts, and am willing and can 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 in spite of appearances, of forgiving my projections onto my brother. As I came closer to withdrawing my projections onto others, I began to see the error as being mine and feeling guilty for it. So then my goal became one of forgiving my errors and seeing the innocence within my own mind.  But all of those goals were for the purpose of joining with my brothers in our innocence and so returning 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, and 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 surrender the idea of winning and making my brother wrong.

I discovered that there was no loss in not winning over a brother and that the joy of winning with a brother was truly satisfying. It was strange realization at first, but now I can’t see how I ever believed otherwise and it is just another step toward the ultimate goal of returning to the Kingdom.

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 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. I am learning to put aside the very limited vision of myself as 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 Self, to see my true nature, and it is a brilliant and beautiful thing to behold.

I had to stop writing for a moment as the ego mind rebelled. 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 awhile and I better get my mind on planning for that. I have money to save, a house to pay off, a car note, a job that is not guaranteed and if I lose it all the other goals are going down the drain. Then what would happen? And the body itself is getting old and I need to exercise it and 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. It makes me want to cry.

Then I remember that this is just a little voice of separation and while it was made by me and served my purpose for awhile, 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. 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. I am the Son of God and He loves me and believes in me. I remain as God created me, and nothing can change that. I have one goal and that is to return my mind fully and completely to the Kingdom.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

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://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

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://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Page 1 of 3 pages  1 2 3 > 

<< Back to main page of Together, We Light the Way

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.