We are Awareness-life-presence. We are not bodies. “Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found.”

We are being asked here to see the false as false—the temporary as temporary. As with forgiveness, the body is another illusion that can be used to let go of all illusion.  Indeed, the lesson states, “Declare your innocence and you are free. The body disappears, because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees. For this, the body will appear as useful form for what the mind must do. It thus becomes a vehicle which helps forgiveness be extended to the all-inclusive goal that it must reach, according to God’s plan.”

In order to surrender this illusion to the service of Holy Spirit or Awareness, we must surrender our beliefs about the body. Because we seem to have an experience of the body, we believe that we are contained within it. Indeed, in order to have any other tactile or visceral experience, we feel that “within” our bodies. All of the bodily sensations we experience, however, we, ourselves, place within the body. It is similar to the phantom limb syndrome experienced by amputees—their mind tells them they are experiencing a sensation in the missing limb, which is of course, impossible.

NTI Philippians, Chapter 2 says this of the body: “Do not be personal with the body as you watch it and observe it. Do not feel that you are looking at you. I tell you, the body that you observe is not you. It is merely an expression of your thought. You are the process of creation that is God. You are mind and spirit that is not in the world. Separate yourself from the body in order to observe it. Observe it in order to learn what you want to learn about yourself.”

We are asked by this lesson to wear the body lightly—to be willing to give this illusion up as all the others. The lesson states very clearly that the body is a limit. It is because we believe the body is “me,” that we value it so highly.

We can consciously choose to watch the body but to dis-identify with it in the same way we are learning to dis-identify with thought. Thoughts seem to appear within our awareness, yet we are coming to see we are not the thoughts. In the same way, recognize that the body seems to appear within your awareness, but you are not your body. Watch your body in the same way that you watch your thoughts. It is the thoughts to which the body responds. Learn this connection in order that it be undone.

When the body tells you that it is tired, for example, do you always find this to actually be true? I often lay down to sleep, sleepy, and find I can’t sleep. When the body gives you directives, see if you are able to at least delay them—don’t immediately move to comfort the body.

We are being asked not to value the valueless. We are asked to give up our fascination with the body and focus our attention on the truth of our nature—on awareness-life-presence. “The mind (Awareness) that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked.”

When we accept awareness as our identity, we become the observer of everything that appears including the body. We abide as our Self while temporary appearances come and go. We do not give undue meaning or value to anything that does not last.

“I am not a body. I am free. I hear the Voice that God has given me, and it is only this my mind obeys.”

Today’s lesson makes clear that illusions are used to undo illusions, because truth has not been touched by illusions at all. This is why we are doing two things at once: We are practicing the teachings of A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students and practicing awareness-watching-awareness meditation.

Our work with A Course in Miracles is learning about and practicing the illusions that undo illusions. Let’s not get confused about this. Many students have become lost, because they have adopted the Course’s thought system as the truth. It isn’t the truth. It is an illusion that can be used to undo illusions.

Our second practice, awareness-watching-awareness, is the practice of paying attention to truth, which remains untouched by illusions.

Because we believe in personhood, we deny our wholeness and we believe in the illusion of loneliness. At the same time, we seek for wholeness. Since we are no longer see ourselves as whole, we combat the feeling of loneliness by joining groups with seemingly common interests and common values. These groups seem opposed to others that have congregated around their own interests and common values. The illusions just keep building on each other. Those groups may not support me and my like minded friends. They may seem to condemn, attack and even injure me and my group. But, condemnation and attack and the injury caused by them are at the level of body and mind. In truth they do not occur and have no effects.

Our lesson today says, “Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and all it seemed to have will be undone.”

Illusions like condemnation, attack, injury, personhood and loneliness are all one in the same. To the degree that we are caught up in them, we are identified with illusions as what we are. All illusions have equal power to keep us lost and ignorant of our truth. This is why forgiveness is justified regardless of what the illusion is. There are no special circumstances that validate condemnation of one another.

Forgiveness being an illusion, undoes illusions. Forgiveness is the one helpful illusion where we step back and see it is all illusion. Today’s lesson refers to forgiveness as the illusion that is the answer to the rest. Forgiveness is letting go of thought! It is removing value, belief and attention from thought.

We justify our condemnation and attacks unless we are vigilant for forgiveness. Today’s lesson says, “And why would you oppose [forgiveness], quarrel with it, seek to find a thousand ways in which it must be wrong, a thousand other possibilities? Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the answer to your problems in your hand?”

Forgiveness’ purpose is undoing and unlearning the illusions that keep us trapped within the illusion because we are valuing the illusion. As long as you believe illusions have value, you are caught at the level of illusions. So illusions must be used to undo illusions until they have no value to you. Then your attention will leave illusions completely and truth will be all that is left in your Awareness.

*PLEASE NOTE: A friend informed me this morning that my tip was actually about Lesson 195, Love is the way I walk in gratitude. This happenstance confirms for me the perfection (and the sense of humor) of the “all in all.” If you would like to see Regina’s tip for today’s Lesson 197, It can be but my gratitude I earn, click here.