What is the Body? IV

The following series of posts, begun on May first, are taken from Ken Wapnick’s, Journey Through the Workbook of a Course in Miracles, Vol. Seven, pages 69-72.  They represent a radical alternative to our ‘normal’, everyday view of the human body and our traditional views of spirituality.  This view is both horrifying and exhilarating.  See what you think.   It’s best not to swallow these ideas whole, nor reject them out of hand.  What’s best is to chew them over, mull them and reflect upon the rare occasions when the ideas seem to explain your experience.  The Course itself is believed to be channeled by Jesus as a correction to what’s been done with his ideas.

“We are what we chose to identify with, ensuring that the Love of God remains a very distant memory [if we chose to ID with the ego].  Jesus now turns to the second way the ego uses the body as means of securing its existence.  ‘The body will not stay.  Yet this he [the ego and us as the ego] sees as double safety.’ The first safety, again, is that the mindless body keeps us safe from choosing love.  The second safety is that the body’s death – ‘the body will not stay’ – proves God is wrong and we are right.  Thus, the body first ensures the survival of our individual identity and keeps God’s Love forgotten.

“Second, it proves that death is real, which means that eternal life is an illusion.  Once again God is shown to be a liar: ‘the body’s vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God.  This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly.  For the Son of God’s impermanence is proof his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them.’

“The body does exactly what the mind wants it to do.  Its impermanence proves the mind’s defenses work and the ego’s strategy has succeeded.  We are mindless bodies, which establish that the separation from God is a fact.  Thus God cannot exist, because perfect wholeness cannot contain thoughts of separation.”