Lesson 199: “I am not a body.  I am free.”

Society presumes we will conform to a certain age based characteristics in our personalities.  

We are reminded that babies rest and eat a lot and cry.  We hear folks closer to the end of their lives are designed to slow down and do what is advised for them like retire from work and spend time with their grandkids.  The world has certain expectations of certain age groups and then expects them to behave according to what we think is typical for a certain group.

The Course is teaching us to practice being conscious. 

Don’t stress or be upset if we are not doing this set prescription of how our lives are supposed to look.

We want to become increasingly wise because we slowly are learning how to get out of the way after practicing the Course for a time and we grow to resonate with God’s wisdom.  

We are meant to practice being in the moment and practice our commitment to being only in the now.  But even when our lives shift, in and out of certain age groups, we don’t have to do any particular behavior that the world thinks we are supposed to do at any age.

We must give ourselves permission to do exactly what we feel drawn to do because we are conversing with God and getting the messages from Him about how to take the next step in our lives. 

Our egos make our judgements about meeting the world’s standards the same as an incredibly steep hill.  We get fastened right there on that hill because we can’t move gracefully forward when we are paralyzed by that judgement that the ego conserves.

The lessons of being not a body remind us that the world is incredibly limited. 

When we construct the world of illusion- and we project out a world and a body- these are thoroughly lacking in any meaning of freedom.

The body keeps us cornered into this tiny little stretch.

The Course is asking us to get ourselves out of that minute little compartment as soon as we can.  Get out of this little box that appears to have our faces on it.  This is an opportunity to live in the nightmare or get out.  Our bodies are always those that we struggle with because the ego is completely full of every kind of scorn for our bodies. The ego likes to complain about them because it makes the ego feel validated.

The question is whether we are willing to stop thrashing ourselves by way of making our bodies a problem.

The Course says- seriously consider how happy we are when we identify with the limits of the body? 

I would say we are never happy because we are simply attacking ourselves to the nth degree.

We have a long-held-habit of making the body full of ways to be angry at ourselves. This is exactly why Jesus cares that we simply stop identifying with the body.  We do this absolutely in the ego’s perspective.  What we can do instead is practice giving that body right to God’s altar.

Then, we release that intense attachment and all the suffering that comes with our bodies being our number one focus.

The Course says we are not a body.  It wants us to just stay committed to being identified with God and not the ego’s home- which is the body.  To accept this as true is one of the most important things we can do because we get to terminate that constant battle with the ego.

Then we can focus on God instead as we continually and little by little allow the attachment to the body be whittled away. 

This happens when we remind ourselves to be vigilant in our knowing we are not a body.