Paradox and the Energy Continuum

The body will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by using the dichotomy. The focus, though, should not be on a strong and healthy body, but on a forgiving mind. With a forgiving mind, looking from the continuum at the mind’s thoughts under the influence of the dichotomy, thoughts of sin, guilt and hate while, we are able to look with gentleness, patience and compassion and as we do, those qualities of spirit become our experience here regardless of the body. Shifting our attention from the body/externals which are designed to keep us out of our minds, within, to our minds, we can learn to distinguish between its two thought systems: the dichotomy and the continuum.

This is an ongoing process, never, ever truly done so long as I identify with the body and believe I am a body living in the world. But I can make progress. I can learn that when I choose the ego/dichotomy instead of my reality as spirit and the qualities of spirit, I will suffer, be upset and miserable, become angry and anxious and will neither sleep or eat well.

Part of the process is to learn to see my experiences in my body as a classroom in which I learn to shift the purpose of my body from teaching me I’m separate and terrorized to cuing me to connect with my reality as spirit. It’s a paradox, the body is a classroom in which I learn I’m not a body. As long as I believe I’m here, a separate ego in the world using the dichotomy conframe, my focus is the body; but this focus can be guided by a different teacher. I can shift teachers from the ego to spirit and shift from the dichotomy to the continuum. This in turn, shifts the body’s purpose, from fear, terror and separation to connection, compassion and the peace that passeth understanding.

That is why the Course describes the escape from the body as a quiet melting into the mind: “There is no violence. The body is not attacked, but simply properly perceived. You are not really lifted out of it. You go where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of Self. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourSelf in peace. Not through destruction, not through breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting inward.”