What is the Body?

Our special theme says, “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. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. … The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety. For the Son of God’s impermanence is ‘proof’ his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them.”

Death is not a thought that most humans cherish. Most people believe they would prefer not to die. Yet, our special theme says the opposite. It says that we see death as “double safety.” Is that true?

Let’s test it. Which of these ideas do you find most comforting?

1. Your body will die, but your personality-mind will continue in a spiritual afterlife where you will rejoin with your loved ones who have passed over.
2. Your body-personality will die, but you will be reincarnated as another body-personality.
3. Your body-personality-mind will die, but life continues beyond your body-personality-mind in all living humans, animals, insects, sea life, plants, etcetera.

Most people will pick #1 or #2 as most comforting. To most people, #3 seems like ‘I no longer exist’ even though life continues as other things.

Look carefully at what our special theme says. It says:

“The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. … The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety. For the Son of God’s impermanence is ‘proof’ his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them.”

If we believe that we can cease to exist while other things live, we believe we are separate from those other things. The ‘fence’ seems to work.

Contemplate this today. Do you believe that your body-personality-mind must survive death in some way in order for you to survive? Or, can the body-personality-mind die while you continue as the life that permeates all living things?

If this contemplation scares you, remember that ego is terrified of no sense of individuality. Let the fear be as it is. Don’t try to change it. Simply remember that this fear comes from ego, and continue the contemplation.

Let me perceive no differences today.

Today’s lesson asks, “Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one? Why should I give this one a thousand names, when only one suffices?”

One name that could suffice for the whole is life-awareness.

A human is life-awareness. A cat is life-awareness. A lizard is life-awareness. A beetle is life-awareness. A fish is life-awareness. A tree is life-awareness. You are life-awareness.

It is one life-awareness. Life-awareness is one.

Contemplate this today.

Here is a summary of today’s contemplations:

1. Do you believe that your body-personality-mind must survive death in some way in order for you to survive? Or, can the body-personality-mind die while you continue as the life that permeates all living things?
2. Contemplate life-awareness as what you are, one life-awareness, life-awareness as one.

If you have 30 minutes for a meditation today, I recommend this meditation again:

AWA Description Z

If you have time and would enjoy a second meditation today, I recommend this meditation as your second meditation. It is 40 minutes long:

Am I the Body?

Before beginning our new special theme, I would like to review each of the special themes that we’ve already contemplated.

What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness is recognizing yourself as the unaffected Self. Therefore, “what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.” Forgiveness “looks, and waits, and judges not.”

What is Salvation? Salvation is healing by “failing to support the world of dreams … it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed …”

What is the World? It is a “false perception” where “mechanisms of illusion … go to find what has been given them to seek.” Yet, “all perception can be given a new purpose. … Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete.”

What is Sin? Sin is ignorance or outward focus. “Sin gave the body eyes… The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. … Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined issuing from thoughts that are untrue.”

What is the Body?

“The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts.”

When I say that you are life-awareness-presence, you are able to pause the thinking, look and see that is true. To deny that you are life-awareness-presence is ignorance too insane to actually believe. The ego may be able to ignore this fact by attracting attention to thought, but it cannot hide this fact if one redirects attention toward the Self.

However, belief in the body as what you are distorts the fact that you are life-awareness-presence. Although you are able to look and see that life-awareness-presence is what you are, the belief that you are the body makes it seem like the body is primary and life-awareness-presence is secondary. It makes it seem like the body was born, and then life-awareness-presence arose as a byproduct of the body’s birth. It also enables you to imagine that when the body dies, life-awareness-presence dies too.

Is it true that life-awareness-presence is a byproduct of the body? Does life-awareness-presence exist because the body breathes, the heart pumps blood and the brain functions?

Does life-awareness end when the bodily functions cease?

Close your eyes and look to see what claims life-awareness-presence as “mine.” What says “my awareness”? Is it the body or is it the mind?

What says “my body”?

If you watch subtly, you will find that the mind is the one that imagines the body is primary and life-awareness is secondary. Thought says this is true.

Does the fact that thought says it’s true make it true? Is thought a reliable source?

Contemplate this throughout the day today.

God is my refuge and security.

Our special theme says, “The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts.” And then it goes on to say, “For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love.”

Here’s another way to say this: The mind feels safe within the perception of individuality. The mind is terrified of no sense of individuality.

However, are you the one that thinks this way? Are you the mind or are you the life-awareness-presence that is aware of the mind?

What is your truth?

The lesson says, “I will identify with what I think is refuge and security.”

If you think the mind is your refuge and security, then you will identify with thought, and because thought identifies with the body, you will identify with the body too.

However, if you feel your refuge and security lie with the unaffected Self, you will identify with it, and because you identify with it, you will not identify with thought.

Contemplate this today too.

Here is a summary of the questions you will contemplate throughout the day today:

1. Is thought a reliable source?
2. Which is my refuge and security, thought or unaffected life-awareness-presence?

If you have 30 minutes for meditation today, I recommend this meditation again today:

AWA Description Z

What is Sin?

Our special theme says, “There is no sin. Creation is unchanged.”

What is creation?

You are creation. What you are is what A Course in Miracles means by the word, “creation.”

Let’s revisit yesterday’s analogy:

At the surface of the ocean, waves appear. Each wave is temporary, like the body and the personality. The water in the waves appear to be affected by the weather, just like you seem to be affected by the world and the mind’s thoughts. However, the water that is part of the wave isn’t really affected. It may sometimes appear calm and sometimes appear highly agitated, but it is always water. It doesn’t become blood or seaweed. It is forever unaffected by the weather.

At the same time, at the depth of the ocean, the water is untouched by even the appearance of being affected. The weather at the surface does not reach the depths at all.

In the same way, your true Self is not affected at the surface, where there is the appearance of affected. And the appearance of affected does not exist at all within the depths of your Self. At the depth, there is no judgment, no duality, no ignorance and no outward focus.

As this analogy makes clear, both at the surface and at the depth, you remain what you have always been, life-awareness. You have never not been life-awareness, and you shall always be life-awareness.

Let me remember God created me.

Today, let’s contemplate what “I” and “me” really mean. Typically, when the mind uses these words, it refers to itself. It refers to thought as “I” and “me.”

However, that is not what “I” and “me” really mean. “I” and “me” are pronouns used to refer to one’s self, and thought is not a self.

When the mind uses “I” and “me” to refer to itself, it is a misuse of those terms. When we believe thought is “I” and “me,” we are confused about what we are.

Ramana Maharshi said:

That which rises as “I” in this body is the mind. If one inquires as to where in the body the thought “I” rises first, one would discover that it rises in the heart. … Even if one thinks constantly “I,” “I,” one will be led to that place.

If you have 30 minutes for meditation today, I recommend this meditation:

Self-Inquiry Meditation