A Course In Miracles - Chapter 8, Section VII

ACIM is read one section at a time. It is a guidebook leading us back to our true natures, as we open to the awareness of love's presence. All quoted material is from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, publisher, and the copyright holder. This material is used with permission. (Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd #306 Novato, CA 94949 USA).
Glossary-Index for a Course In Miracles, 8th edition, Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. Music by Bensound.

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Teresa Hubbard.

Welcome back to our continued reading of the text to A Course in Miracles.

We continue today in Chapter 8,

The Journey Back.

To summarize my takeaways,

In Section 7 of Chapter 8 we learn that when attack in any form enters our mind,

That we are equating ourselves with a body,

Which is the ego's interpretation of the body.

We don't have to actually attack physically to accept this interpretation.

We are accepting it by simply believing that attack can get us something we want.

When a child of God sees himself this way,

He is belittling himself and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled.

We are asked to remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication.

While the ego uses the body to separate,

The Holy Spirit reaches through the body to join with others.

When we use the body to attack,

It is harming us,

But when we use the mind only to reach other minds,

Minds who believe they are bodies,

We are teaching them through the body that this is not so,

Which helps us understand the power of the mind within us.

In the service of uniting,

It becomes a beautiful lesson in communion.

This is the only natural use of the body to which it can be put.

Although mind cannot be made physical,

It can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go beyond itself.

By reaching out beyond the body,

The mind extends itself to other minds,

Re-establishing the power of the mind in us.

Time from illusions lies only in not believing them.

The power of wholeness is extension.

We must not arrest our thought in this world,

But instead open our mind to creation in God.

I invite you to keep a few things in mind as you listen to the reading.

The Course uses male pronouns,

Yet this is simply a way of pointing to the spiritual being,

Having no gender.

The Course is written in first person,

And although not introduced directly to the reader,

It becomes clear that the words are from Jesus,

Often quoting from the Bible.

The Course uses traditional Christian terms in a non-traditional manner.

These words are simply pointers to truth,

Nothing more.

A few definitions of terms you will hear within this reading.

God.

The Creator.

The Source of all being or life.

God's essence is Spirit,

Which is shared with all creation.

Yet the word God can be limiting,

Since universal energy and life are infinitely vast and cannot be contained in a word.

Ego.

Our belief in the separated or false self that we made as a substitute for the self that God created.

Holy Spirit.

The communication link between God and us.

Bridging the gap between the mind of Christ and our human minds.

The voice for God.

And now,

On to the reading.

A Course in Miracles Chapter 8,

The Journey Back.

Section 7.

The Body as a Means of Communication.

Attack is always physical.

When attack in any form enters your mind,

You are equating yourself with a body,

Since this is the ego's interpretation of the body.

You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation.

You are accepting it simply by the belief that attack can get you something you want.

If you did not believe this,

The idea of attack would have no appeal for you.

When you equate yourself with a body,

You will always experience depression.

When a child of God thinks of himself in this way,

He is belittling himself and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled.

Since he can find himself only in them,

He has cut himself off from salvation.

Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication.

Being the communication link between God and his separated sons,

The Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made in the light of what he is.

The ego separates through the body.

The Holy Spirit reaches through it to others.

You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not regard bodies solely as a means of joining minds and uniting them with yours and mine.

This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value.

Of itself it has none.

If you use the body for attack,

It is harmful to you.

If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies,

And teach them through the body that this is not so,

You will understand the power of the mind that is in you.

If you use the body for this and only for this,

You cannot use it for attack.

In the service of uniting,

It becomes a beautiful lesson in communion,

Which has value and to a communion is.

This is God's way of making unlimited what you have limited.

The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do,

Because he knows the only reality of anything is the service that renders God on behalf of the function he gives it.

Communication ends separation.

Attack promotes it.

The body is beautiful or ugly,

Peaceful or savage,

Helpful or harmful,

According to the use to which it is put.

And in the body of another,

You will see the use to which you have put yours.

If the body becomes a means you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of union of the sonship,

You will not see anything physical except as what it is.

Use it for truth,

And you will see it truly.

Misuse it,

And you will misunderstand it,

Because you have already done so by misusing it.

Interpret anything apart from the Holy Spirit,

And you will mistrust it.

This will lead you to hatred and attack and loss of peace.

Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding.

Loss of any kind is impossible.

But when you look upon a brother as a physical entity,

His power and glory are lost to you,

And so are yours.

You have attacked him,

But you must have attacked yourself first.

Do not see him this way for your own salvation,

Which must bring him his.

Do not allow him to belittle himself in your mind,

But give him freedom from his belief and littleness and thus escape from yours.

As part of you,

He is holy.

As part of me,

You are.

To communicate with part of God himself is to reach beyond the kingdom to its creator,

Through his voice which he has established as part of you.

Rejoice then that of yourself you can do nothing.

You are not of yourself.

He of whom you are has willed your power and glory for you,

With which you can perfectly accomplish his holy will for you when you accept it for yourself.

He has not withdrawn his gifts from you,

But you believe you have withdrawn them from him.

Let no son of God remain hidden for his namesake,

Because his name is yours.

The Bible says,

The word or thought was made flesh.

Strictly speaking,

This is impossible,

Since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another.

Different orders of reality merely appear to exist,

Just as different orders of miracles do.

Thought cannot be made into flesh,

Except by belief,

Since thought is not physical.

Yet thought is communication,

For which the body can be used.

This is the only natural use to which it can be put.

To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose,

And thus to confuse the goal of his curriculum.

There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as a curriculum he cannot learn.

His sense of adequacy suffers,

And he must become depressed.

Being faced with an impossible learning situation is the most depressing thing in the world.

In fact,

It is ultimately why the world itself is depressing.

The Holy Spirit's curriculum is never depressing,

Because it is a curriculum of joy.

Whenever the reaction to learning is depression,

It is because the true goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.

In this world,

Not even the body is perceived as whole.

Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions,

With little or no relationship to each other,

So that it appears to be ruled by chaos.

Guided by the ego it is.

Guided by the Holy Spirit it is not.

It becomes a means by which the part of the mind you tried to separate from Spirit can reach beyond its distortions and return to Spirit.

The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit,

Where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego.

In this sense,

The body does become a temple to God.

His voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.

Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication.

Since this is natural,

It heals by making whole,

Which is also natural.

All mind is whole,

And the belief that part of it is physical,

Or not mind,

Is a fragmented or sick interpretation.

Mind cannot be made physical,

But it can be made manifest through the physical,

If it uses the body to go beyond itself.

By reaching out,

The mind extends itself,

It does not stop at the body,

For if it does,

It is blocked to its purpose.

A mind that has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack,

Because it has turned against itself.

The removal of blocks then,

Is the only way to guarantee help and healing.

Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind that is working through the body,

But not in it.

If the mind believes the body is its goal,

It will distort its perception of the body,

And by blocking its own extension beyond it,

Will induce illness by fostering separation.

Perceiving the body as a separate entity cannot but foster illness,

Because it is not true.

A medium of communication loses its usefulness if it is used for anything else.

To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in its purpose.

To communicate is to join,

And to attack is to separate.

How can you do both simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer?

Perception of the body can be unified only by one purpose.

This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights,

And gives it over entirely to the one light in which it can be really understood.

To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal is a fundamental confusion that blocks the understanding of both.

Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it.

This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds,

And does not arrest itself in its extension.

This arrest is the cause of all illness,

Because only extension is the mind's function.

The opposite of joy is depression.

When your learning promotes depression instead of joy,

You cannot be listening to God's joyous teacher and learning his lessons.

To see a body as anything except a means of communication is to limit your mind and to hurt yourself.

Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose.

If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind,

It becomes whole,

Because the mind's purpose is one.

Attack can only be an assumed purpose of the body,

Because apart from the mind,

The body has no purpose at all.

You are not limited by the body,

And thought cannot be made flesh.

Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and does not interpret it as limitation.

Whenever you see another is limited to or by the body,

You are imposing this limit on yourself.

Are you willing to accept this when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape from limitations?

To conceive of the body as a means of attack and to believe that joy could possibly result is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner.

He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum,

And one that is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his own.

Joy is unified purpose,

And unified purpose is only God's.

When yours is unified,

It is his.

Believe you can interfere with his purpose,

And you need salvation.

You have condemned yourself,

But condemnation is not of God.

Therefore it is not true.

No more are any of its seeming results.

When you see a brother as a body,

You are condemning him,

Because you have condemned yourself.

Yet if all condemnation is unreal,

And it must be unreal since it is a form of attack,

Then it can have no results.

Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true.

Free your mind from the belief that this is possible.

In its complete impossibility lies your only hope for release.

But what other hope would you want?

Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them.

There is no attack,

But there is unlimited communication,

And therefore unlimited power in wholeness.

The power of wholeness is extension.

Do not arrest your thought in this world,

And you will open your mind to creation in God.