Friday, September 18, 2015
Lesson 261: “What is the body?” “God is my refuge and security.”
The Course says that what matters is our feeling within our minds and hearts. We are affected only in this way. We learn from our experience of living in the world in a body that bodies can be injured and our light extinguished. A lot of us feel fear about our bodies and sometimes we don’t make the connection that this is really often just a fear in our minds. I know I have discovered in my mind that even if my body is experiencing pain, when the rest of my mind is at peace, I feel dramatically different despite being in the experience of physical pain.
Our experience can be drastically different when our minds are calm and serene. Jesus wants us to understand this is the only important way to make accomplish our security. We must focus on our minds and make clear effort to stay in a place of certainty and forgiveness in the process of whatever is happening in the world or in the discomfort in our bodies. The way to have absolutely the most comfortable experience possible is when we make sure our minds are at peace. Then the pain may not seem real at all or may be significantly reduced. I notice this in my own life- that getting through a hard time in the world is often much helped when my heart is light and easy.
This bit of logic helps us to remember to focus our efforts on the mind’s peace first. For many of us we may forget the mind completely when our bodies seem to be faced with some challenge. Jesus teaches us here to just watch it when we do this. in moments when we forget the peace of our minds- some times in the face of some physical affront, Jesus reminds us in the Course to forgive ourselves. Remember that we may not be entirely used to focusing on our minds especially in the face of adversity.
Remember that our forgiveness for ourselves is one of the cornerstones of the Course’s philosophy. We want to forgive everyone, the situation and ourselves at each juncture of our experience. Just know that we deserve forgiveness and so does everyone else. The Course teaches us how to connect to this concept and realize that we are worth the gift and practice of forgiving ourselves. When we forget God and we forget to focus solely on the state of our minds, we can just hold this gesture of self-love toward ourselves in the form of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the way to stay in tuned with our certainty with God and in the name of God. When we forgive ourselves this is the sure way to maintain peace within. And when we feel peaceful within this is the way to our experience of feeling secure and invulnerable. When we can forgive ourselves we can connect with our certainty because we feel worthy of it. When we are in the state of our certainty this is the way to achieve invulnerability in the world and in our hearts.