The last sentence; I’ll read it again. (W-pI.136.8:3-4a)You suffer pain because
the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity
preserved—Now the “true” is put in quotes, which lets you know that’s really not true.
Our true identity is as spirit (our Self, capital “S”) or Christ. (W-pI.136.8:4) Thus is your "true"
identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this
little pile of dust silenced and stilled. So our “true” identity in quotes, as an ego, is kept
preserved and is kept safe, and the alien thought that we could be something more or beyond this
little pile of dust, beyond the body, is silenced and stilled. That’s the purpose of the body.
Many places in the Course Jesus uses the phrase from the Psalms to refer to the Holy Spirit:
“the still, small Voice.” That’s the Voice that is silenced and is stilled. That’s the Voice
that the body, the ego’s raucous shrieks, drowns out. Yeah? Q: I heard something some years back,
actually in the Est training that, when you were talking about thinking, that reminded me.
It went, “That which you think you think is that which is thinking you,” and I have a feeling that
pertained to the ego at the time. And the ego never wants us to know who’s doing the thinking.
There’s a question earlier in the text where Jesus asks, “Who is the ‘you’ who are living in
this world?” (T-4.II.11:8) and, while he doesn’t give the answer right then (the whole Course is
the answer, really), the “you” is not the “you” you see in your bedroom mirror every morning.
The “you” that’s living in this world is not living in this world,
and that’s the mind. In an important section on specialness in the text Jesus explains how there’s
no way you could hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit when it’s drowned out by the voice of
specialness (T-24.II.5:1); the voice of individuality, the voice of separation.
That’s the purpose of the body and, of course, the ingenuity of the ego is that
it pulls this off without our knowing it because our bodies seem so real. Our needs, our pleasures,
our pains seem so real that it is almost impossible to understand that all this is made up.
That’s why there’s that important statement in Lesson 190, if there is God there is no pain;
if there is pain there is no God (W-pI.190.3:3-4). Everyone knows when we are in pain—physical
or psychological—God is the furthest thing from our mind unless we invoke a magical deity
to come down and fix the pain. Like what we’ll get to a little bit later, the whole value of
being in pain is that it roots us in the body. The whole value of feeling good, after a good exercise
or a nice meal when I’m hungry, the whole value of that is it makes my body feel good,
which means in no way do I believe I’m not a body. Again, first it’s difficult to understand
it intellectually, and then far, far more difficult to make it part of your experience,
but to really understand that Jesus is not talking to you as a body.
In this course, the “you” that he continually addresses us as is not “you;” the “you” that
you see every morning in your mirror, is not the “you” that you dress, that you feed, that
you recreate with, that you relax with. It’s not the “you” that thinks about what these words say.
It’s not the “you” whose eyes read the words that your brain thinks about. It’s not the body at all.
He’s talking to the mind, specifically to the decision-making part of your mind that
had made the incorrect choice for the ego as a teacher, and now has to undo that incorrect
choice by choosing the Holy Spirit or Jesus as your Teacher. That’s the “you” he’s addressing.
It’s almost impossible, however, not to go through a period of time (if not many, many, many years)
in which you still feel Jesus is talking to the “you” you think you are; the “you” that’s a body,
that’s a personality, that has a past, that has a present that’s reading
this course, and that has a future that you hope will be better than your past was.
It’s very hard to understand that that is not whom he’s addressing at all.
This is a course in helping you awaken from the dream; not to live more happily within the dream.
And, again, while these are words that I said that everybody would certainly agree with,
the practice and the application of them are something much, much different because our
immediate response is that he’s talking to me. “He wants me to be more happy. He wants me to forgive.
He wants me to be less guilty. He wants me to be less fearful. He wants me to be more peaceful.”
But do you realize how absolutely insane Jesus would be if that’s what he wanted for you?
He would want your illusory self, a figure in the dream, to be happy.
Well, how could an illusory self be happy or unhappy?
When Jesus appeared in the world 2100 years ago, he appeared in a body. People saw him as a body.
Whatever stories people made up about that there was certainly an experience of a person. The
difference between him and everybody else was that he knew he was not a body. He knew he wasn’t here
because he knew there was no “here” to come into any more than there was a “here” to leave.
His “here” was the love in his mind, that he asks all of us now to share with him.
And remember, when he talks the body and he pokes fun at the body, as we’ve already seen
in that one passage specifically, he is not just talking about the physical body;
he’s talking about your personality as well; your psychological body.
He’s talking about the individual self you think you are that you associate
with the person whose name you bear; the person that was born to the people you call your parents,
that grew up in a certain environment, in a certain country, as part of a certain race,
a certain region, a certain religion, a certain culture, a certain gender;
a person that relates to other bodies that share in the same delusional system you share in.
We all share the same ego thought system. That’s what got us here. We all share the
same correction for that insanity, the right-minded Presence of the Holy Spirit
and, above all, we share the same power within our minds to choose between the two. And
as you live that more and more and become more aware that even as you’re a body
living with other bodies and interacting with other bodies, you become more aware that despite
all the differences that obviously exist on the material and psychological level that distinguish
one body, one person from another, despite all these, we’re all the same, which is not
the same as the experience of absolute oneness, which we’re not capable of experiencing here.
But the reflection of that oneness is understanding we are all one in insanity,
we are all one in sanity, and we are all one in choosing one or the other; having the power
to choose one or the other. That’s what awakens us from this dream. So we’re not asked to deny
the body or any of our experiences in the body, physically or psychologically. We are really asked
to shift the purpose that the body serves. That’s what we’re asked to do. So, that’s what that line
means that I quoted earlier, that the Holy Spirit does not take away our special relationships but
He transforms them (T-17.IV.2:3). He does not ask us to sacrifice or give up anything of the body;
anything. He’s simply asking to shift the purpose for the body. All that we do is we see the body
now as a means instead of an end. We see the body as a classroom. We see the body as a vehicle that
gets us from where we are, which is the nightmare world of hate and guilt and pain and death,
to get us from there to drive through the ego thought system (but with a different driver)
that will eventually get us to the real world, at which point, then, we don’t need the body anymore.
Not that we necessarily die but we don’t need the body as a classroom. Our bodies may still live.
We still live through “the seven ages of man;” from birth through death and the seven stages
in between, but we do it differently. We don’t do it complaining and whining. And even though
our bodies may fall apart as we get older, we’ll say, “What does that have to do with me?
The experience of Jesus’ loving and peaceful presence in my mind
is totally unaffected by the decrepitude of my body.”
So again, it’s not that my body doesn’t change, because in this world bodies change,
but the love in my mind doesn’t change. Just as when I get fearful,
the hate and the guilt in my mind, they don’t change. What changes
is the amount of “time” (quote/unquote, because in the mind you don’t really have “time”),
the amount of time I spend with the ego or the Holy Spirit; that changes.
So this course is all about not changing the dream. It’s changing the mind of the dreamer.