What is the Body? 7

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.

“Having caused a veil to fall across the Son’s mind, blotting out all memory of how and why the body was made, the ego ensures he will forget the body’s specific purpose, with no memory of its source.  Even if we are regressed to the moment of birth, the birth canal, the womb, or even the egg and sperm, we still have no memory of the mind from which we came.

“No matter how many past lives we may access, no recollection remains of the mind the ego has obliterated from our remembrance.  Thus is the ego allowed to lie and lie and lie yet again, for we have forgotten that the current lie was a defense against the previous one, which defended against the lie that came before that.   By the ego’s making us forget what preceded our existence, we have no way of questioning its strategy.”

What is the Body? 6

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.

“’And if he did not die, what proof is there that God’s eternal Son can be destroyed?  Despite its inherent insanity, the ego is fiendishly clever, for since we are not aware of its strategy, we cannot see its patent deception.  Jesus explains in the text that the ego tells us to leave the mind and go into a body where we will be safe, escape from God’s punishing wrath, and never die.

“If we stay in our minds, the ego warns, God will certainly annihilate us.  We, as God’s one Son, take the ego’s advice and hide in the body, only to find that the body does indeed perish.  As Jesus explains, the Son then confronts the ego and says: ‘What gives?  You told me I would be safe in my body and I believed you.  Yet now that I am here, my death is as certain as if I had remained in the mid.

“’You say this death is God’s punishment, which you promised I would escape.’ As Jesus explains, the ego’s response is to obliterate the question from our objecting mind.  In other words, we can no longer question the ego because we have totally forgotten [we have a] mind in which the ego’s strategy was planned and accomplished.”

What is the Body? V

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.

“’For if his oneness [ours, in the ego state] still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked?  Who could be victor?  Who could be his prey? Who could be victim? Who the murderer?’  If the Atonement  is true [meaning at-one-ment in the Course], which means God’s Oneness remains untouched [and we are with Him now] – ‘not one note in Heaven’s song was missed’ – there is no duality and no victim and victimizer.  If oneness is the truth, I [as a separate ego] do not exist, because I can exist as an individual only by having first attacked God, making me the victimizer and God my victim; I the victor and God my prey.

“The ego quickly reverses this through projections, and God becomes the murderer and I His prey.  However, it makes no difference because either way, the living Oneness of God has been obliterated, at least in our memory.  Thus does the body prove the ego right, even though the body dies, for to the ego, both dreams are true – victim and victimizer.  ‘A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murderer who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be lingering and slow; of this you dream.  Yet underneath this dream is yet another, in which you become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer of your brother and the world alike.’”

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.”

What is the Body? III

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.

The ego strategy, “therefore, culminating in the body, is to keep itself safe – not from love, but from the decision making power of the Son’s mind.  Thus the ego wants to keep us mindless, for if we do not know we have a mind, how can we ever change it?  And if we cannot change our minds, we can never choose God’s Love over the ego’s hate; His Oneness over the ego’s separation.  Therefore, once we choose the mindless body we become the body.

“This is the ego-body equation of which the early chapters of the text [the Course is divided into three books: Text, Workbook, and Teachers’ Manual] speak; for example: ‘the body is the ego’s home by its own election.  It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe….’  Before we choose the body, however, our safety is the ego’s thought system, with which the Son of God first identifies.  Thus we are no longer Christ, not even a decision maker, but the individual selves that have become the thought system of individuality.  Once projected, this thought system becomes the body, and we are now individual, separated, and physical selves, with no memory that our bodily existence is a defense. We have forgotten what we split off from – the mind; and remember only what we have split off to – the body.”

What is the Body? II

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 not one, but separate, for bodies do not join [the ego says]. Indeed, for opposite reasons, Jesus tells us the same thing: ‘Minds are joined, bodies are not.’  Moreover, bodies were made not to join.  The joining we believe occurs is only the fulfillment of our thoughts of specialness.  This of course is not the joining of forgiveness of which Jesus speaks, and which reflects the completion of heaven.

“’ Seek not for this completion in the bleak world of illusion [the ego world], where nothing is certain and where everything fails to satisfy [for very long].  In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon all illusions [the ego and its thought system]. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept completion, and only this, there is God completed, and His Son [all of humanity] with Him.’ Jesus now turns to the ego’s two-fold purpose in making the body:

“’For within this fence [the body] he [the Son of God] thinks that he is safe from love.  Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside?’  The ego does not know what love is, which is why Jesus continually tells us he cannot really speak to us of God, Heaven, or truth.  Yet the ego does know that if the Son of God chooses love, individuality will disappear.  This is the ego’s fear.”

What is the Body?

The following series of posts 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.

“What is the Body?  As I mentioned earlier, Jesus makes some of the same points here that he made in “What is Sin?’ and “What Is the World?”  The body is purposive, the capstone of the ego’s strategy and final step in its plan to keep the Son of God [all of humanity] mindless.  This mindlessness ensures the ego will be forever safe from the Son’s mind choosing love over separation.

“The summary begins with the image of a fence we saw in ‘The Little Garden’: ‘The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea.  It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not.’ 

“The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts.  It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles.

“This ‘fence’ – the body – keeps me separate from you.  You have your physical and psychological space, I have mine, and the two cannot coexist in the same place.  Being the embodiment of the ego, the body loudly proclaims that separation is the truth: We are not one, but separate, for bodies do not join.”