CLARITY ABOUT ACIM AND THE BODYS PURPOSE If there is nothing Real, called body, which the ego is creating a distorted perception of, then how can you be sure that there is something Real called the divine Individuality that you Are, behind the ego that is obviously what you are? You see, it is not reasonable for you to assume that if the ego parading itself as you is wiped out, that all experience of existence for you will be wiped out. And yet that is just as reasonable as to say that the perception and experience of body through the lens of the ego is false and that when it is wiped out there will be no body left, that there will be nothing identifying--rendering visible and tangible to Mind--the presence of the Individuality or consciousness that you are. QUESTION: There is an area of A Course in Miracles that Im having difficulty with. It is the Courses definition of the physical body, as opposed to what Ive come to understand as Rajs definition of the bodys purpose. What Im perceiving A Course in Miracles as saying is that the body is basically a triumph of the ego, created to attest to our separation, not only from God but from each other. At its most holy purpose it could be used as a vehicle of communication, and other than that it really has no purpose What I came to understand from what Raj is saying about the body is that it has a very divine purpose. Somebody asked a question about their gums, and he went so far as to say the gums have a very divine purpose. Theyre the radiancy of Love. And that seemed to connect with me, and I would really like to understand where Im misperceiving what the Course is saying about the body. ANSWER: The difficulty lies in the fact that the Course, itself, is written for a readership of egos who do not realize that they are egos, who do not realize that there is any alternative to the means of perception which the Course refers to as ego perception. Therefore, for those who believe that what they see is what they get, and that that is all there is to everything, there needed to be a clear statement of the illusory nature of everything that was being experienced--that egos viewing life through the lens of the ego, were experiencing a distortion that could not be taken as fact, that could not be taken as real, because the perception did not allow for an awareness of God in it. This set of books was addressed to those who have embraced the Darwinian theory of evolution, of physical evolvement out of nothing by pure random chance--no underlying intelligence behind it or underneath it, but order that just happened to happen. The phrase, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, reflects this evolutionary, physical interpretation of everything that is going on as though what comes into existence is very temporary and then goes back into nonexistence--all of it simply being the effect of matter, of physical evolution. From within that frame of reference, the experience of everything is false. And this fact needed to be bluntly and clearly stated so that it might dislodge those who read these books from their confidence that they grasp what everything is, and that they are interpreting it and experiencing it correctly. So, the books speak unequivocally in this respect, and it is the reason that the very first lesson says, Nothing I see means anything. At the bottom line that seems very destructive and undermining of ones ability to feel comfortable. If nothing means anything, then what is the use in my existing? But, you see, the intent of that lesson is to create such a stir as to un-rut people from their accepted beliefs and their firm convictions based upon those beliefs, so that they might be brought to a point where they would say, If nothing that I see means anything, what does mean something? You see, that involves a shift, a stepping back from automatic confidences and inner assurances, and causes one to look beyond, or somewhere else. In that looking, in that inquisitiveness, one puts oneself in the position of inspiration, of enlightenment, of the registering of what the Holy Spirit is conveying, the registering of what is Really going on, which has been blocked by ones confidences that he knows just exactly what this physical world is, and is fairly confident that he knows where it came from and how it came about. In the act of inquisitiveness, of openness, it becomes possible for what the Father is to register with one. This is why the Course was written in such unequivocal terms. The terms do not allow one to hang onto even their highest concept of what the earth and what the world and what the body is. It doesnt allow one to harbor pet theories--even more enlightened concepts of what it all is than everyone else has--because even those stand in the way of ones being receptive to the truly undistorted perception of what everything is. You could say that the Course is the great un-rutter. But, something must come after what has been un-rutted. Now one has freedom of movement. One is not caught in a channel from which there can be no variation. Out of the rut there is total freedom of movement, so there must come an experience and an understanding of the territory in which this freedom is occurring. Now comes the opportunity to more correctly discern the world that has not disappeared, and understand it in the context of the infinite expression of the Father. In my working with those who find their way to have a conversation, this perspective is being provided as well. You see, as I have also indicated, you cannot have a false sense of nothing. You cannot have a distorted perception of nothing. You cannot have a counterfeit of nothing. It must be a distorted sense of something. It must be a counterfeit of something. You cannot have a counterfeit $4 bill, because there is no real $4 bill to be counterfeited. That which the ego has been looking at has been the presence of the Father. But the ego, in order to maintain its apparent and supposed existence, must deny the existence of the Father, and so the ego redefines everything in its own distorted way. Tell me, if you wish to take the first narrative of Creation given in the Bible, in which everything that was made, and the Father beheld it, and behold, it was very good--in other words, the Father saw Himself in it--why is it that there needed to be a second description of Creation, which truly refers to the egos process of re-identifying what the Father has made, in which everything becomes named? Everything already was. It was what it was, and what it was was known and experienced fully. There was no need to name it, except that the ego, in order to succeed in denying the Father, had to redefine that which the Father had already defined as His own Self-expression. The ego needed to redefine it in its own terms, thus apparently making that thing independent and different from what was truly the only creative Movement, which is described in the first chapter of Genesis. Now, the process of Awakening is a process of releasing the egos definitions, which are false, and, along with those false definitions, the distorted experience of That which has always been as the expression of the Father. One becomes freed from concepts or definitions and receptive to the clear, undistorted experience of what the original Creation was and is that required the ego to redefine It in order to apparently make a creation unlike the Fathers. Mind you, the ego is incapable of creating anything. Therefore its creation was constituted of a distorting of the perception of the only Creation there was, and, by virtue of that false definition, causing the only Creation there was to appear to be unlike its Source, and therefore independent of the Father. So, you see, literally everything the ego sees, which is constituted of its biasing of Creation Itself, is false, and cannot achieve great heights. It cannot exalt itself and become worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. The biased perception of Reality will fade. It will dissolve. It will no longer be. But there will not be a void in its place. What will be left will be the original and ongoing Movement of Creation that the Father is and always has been being. But, I will tell you that your experience of It will be radically different from your experience of It now. The key factor that needs to be understood is that once one is unrutted, one cannot continue walking around in a state of denial, stating that there can be no God in my experience because it is all illusion. If one continues to deny the body or the forms in the world, one is denying the very place where the Father is being the Movement of Creation with absolute perfection. And if one is turning away from it on the basis that it is absolute illusion (which is like talking about dry water), one then does not have his attention in the very place where the Father is present to be recognized. That is nonproductive, and it inhibits the further experience of freedom that is now necessary since one has become un-rutted. I am not contradicting what the Course says. What the Course says still stands. You must understand that it is referring to everything that is seen from within the egos frame of reference. As one moves out of the egos frame of reference and accesses his or her own greater capacity to be aware divinely, the distortions and the limits of the egos frame of reference begin to fall away, and greater evidences of harmony begin to unfold. The undistorted perception of Reality comes to view, and it is experienced as transformation or healing. The fact is that one must recognize that unless he or she is totally awakened, whenever he or she looks at anything, he or she is not seeing its absolute divine Meaning. One is still seeing, to one degree or another, the distortion inherent in the egos frame of reference. Therefore, at one and the same time, there must be a willingness to not assume that you know what anything is or what anything means, and yet there must be the willingness to acknowledge that each thing has Meaning. That Meaning is derived from the Father and has very little to do with the way in which it is currently being perceived. In this way, with this apparently split dynamic, it becomes possible for you to be willing to let go of whatever confidences you have in your understanding of a thing, without feeling that you are letting yourself into a void, into an emptiness, into a nothingness, because there is at the same time an assurance which I have shared, and which, if you will pay attention, your Soul will tell you is correct, that you are being able to let go because you are opening up to and letting yourself into the clearer experience of the presence of God, and Gods infinite Self-expression called Creation. So, you see, the two together allow a withdrawal of investment from the egos frame of reference, which is totally false, a totally false perception of the one and only Reality, and a greater investment of trust in the presence of the Father right where He has seemed not to be. The two promote your ability to move out of the illegitimate limits that the ego sense has imposed on the Christ that you Are, and help move you into the capacity to own your divinity, own your Christ-hood, and own as real and present and Actual the omnipresence and the omnipotence of the Father. Where? Not in the future. Not around the corner. But right where you are at this moment! The minute you begin to look for the presence of That which is divine in anything, the ego gets scared, because it means you are not buying into its suggestion that what a thing is is what it appears to be, and thats it. In your insistence upon finding the Father right where you are, you are, by your attitude, putting the ego in second place. In effect, you are sending it behind you, out of your range of vision, out of the range of what you are willing to give your attention to. And therefore, in withdrawing your allegiance to it and its point of view, you are aligning yourself with your enlightenment. You are aligning yourself with the opportunity to find God in your fellow man--which means beginning to recognize his or her divinity, his or her Christ-hood, his or her innocence. By virtue of your own exalted view--because you have been willing to let it in, because you are not denying it and pushing it away, calling it an illusion--you join with your brother at the level of his Being, and in so doing strengthen It. Not that It has been weak, but you strengthen It in that your comfort with It allows him to conceive that maybe he can be comfortable with It and not need to deny It. Thus, as an experience within him, it becomes possible for It to become strengthened. Your expression of Love, your recognition of that which is Real in your brother, becomes transformational. Your brother does not disappear, because, you see, he is not just an ego. He is the Christ, upon whom the ego has superimposed its false personal sense or definition. It has imposed this incarceration in a limited frame of reference upon him inappropriately, without authority, and therefore without anything to actually enforce the incarceration. Therefore, when you, relative to yourself, or you, relative to another, do not discount yourself, do not discount that other as being totally false, because obviously you are both egos, you become un-rutted. You acknowledge that you are not the ego that you seem to be, even though you dont know what you really Are. Then there is an investment of trust in a divinity that something in you tells you is there, or which the Course tells you is there. And in shifting your attention in this way, your clarity, your greater capacity to be aware divinely, begins to emerge and register with you, because you are no longer denying it by giving your allegiance to the ego. If there is nothing Real, called body, which the ego is creating a distorted perception of, then how can you be sure that there is something Real called the divine Individuality that you Are, behind the ego that is obviously what you are? You see, it is not reasonable for you to assume that if the ego parading itself as you is wiped out, that all experience of existence for you will be wiped out. And yet that is just as reasonable as to say that the perception and experience of body through the lens of the ego is false and that when it is wiped out there will be no body left, that there will be nothing identifying--rendering visible and tangible to Mind--the presence of the Individuality or consciousness that you are. So, there is not an inconsistency. It is just that the Course is specifically expressed in a way that most effectively un-ruts those upon whom the ego has imposed the greatest limitation, so that they might become open enough and inquisitive enough to allow the revelation of Creation in Its Actuality. It was the first step. If I may put it this way, what you have heard me say, and what you have read in the Newsletters, deals with what one does with what is still going on after one becomes un-rutted. Its the second step. And, ultimately, the second step can serve to justify the first step for those who are consciously engaged in their awakening process. End of the Answer excerpt from December 1988 Newsletter Conversations with Raj/Jesus conducted by the Norwest Foundation for A Course In Miracles nwffacim.wordpress.org/ FaceBook: https://facebook/groups/183859725130360/ All of the activities of the Northwest Foundation for A Course In Miracles are provided without charge or obligation. This is possible because of thoughtfulness, love extended without conditions. Such is the nature of Gift. As a result these materials are available to you, because someone like you has already gifted you with them.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:04:27 +0000
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