[acimlessons_list] LESSON 261 - September 18

Fri Sep 17 06:43:30 EDT 2004

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+ COMMENTARIES ON LESSONS FROM THE WORKBOOK OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES
+ by Allen Watson, with Practice Summaries by Robert Perry, 
+ of The Circle of Atonement
+ Visit our website at <http://www.circleofa.com <http://www.circleofa.com/>
>
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LESSON 261 - September 18

"God is my refuge and security."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

(See also Part II Introduction)

COMMENTARY

If you have read over the preceding page in the Workbook on "What is the
Body?", you will have noticed that the last paragraph of that section talks
about how we "will identify with what [we] think will make [us] safe"
(W-pII.5.5:1). The thought is echoed in the start of this lesson: "I will
identify with what I think is refuge and security" (1:1). If we have a home
which makes us feel safe and secure, for example, we will identify with that
home. The thing which makes us feel safe becomes part of our identity. If
the connection is strong enough, it will actually become our identity in our
minds. We begin to see our "citadel" (1:2) of safety as an essential part of
ourselves. "I will behold myself where I perceive my strength" (1:2).

This is what we have done with our own bodies. We mistakenly see our bodies
as that which makes us safe ("safe from love," actually; the body becomes
the thing that protects us from God, or from the conflict between love and
fear within our minds: you "...interpret the body as yourself in an attempt
to escape from the conflict you have induced", T-3.IV.6:3). Seeing the body
as what makes me safe, I identify with it and perceive my "self" as existing
within it. I also perceive my individual ego identity in the same way. It
protects me from "losing myself" in the unity love encourages. I therefore
encourage my sense of "danger" and even engage in "murderous attack" (1:3)
because these things seem to protect my individuality from the inroads of
other "selves." The same dynamic is reflected in the world in people and
even nations who violently attack others, claiming they are only seeking to
preserve their own peace. The stance is obviously self-contradictory. How
can we "find security in danger" or "peace in murderous attack" (1:3)?

Our true security is in God. "I live in God," and not in my body nor my ego
self (1:4). "In Him I find my refuge and my strength. In Him is my Identity"
(1:5-6). To know this as true, we have to release our hold on the thoughts
that identify us with our bodies and our egos, and we have to begin to give
up attack as a way of life and self-preservation. Attack does not preserve
the Self; it preserves the ego, the false self. It preserves fear, chaos,
and conflict. The only way, therefore, to truly find peace and to find "Who
I really am" is to put an end to our protection of the false self, and to
remember that our true everlasting peace is found only in God (1:7- 8).

May I, Father, come home to You today. May I, in entering into Your Presence
in this holy instant, feel that sense of peace and security that is mine in
truth, in my Identity in You. May I be able to sigh, "Ah! Home!" and feel
the release of tension it brings to be here, in You. May I find my Self, and
let go of all false identification with lesser things. Be my Refuge, today,
Father."The eternal God [is thy] refuge, and underneath [are] the
everlasting arms" (Deut. 33:27). May I allow myself to fall back into Your
arms today. When the day presses on me, be my Refuge, my fortress and my
high tower. Let me escape to You in the holy instant, and know the safety of
Your Love.

What is the Body? (Part 1)

W-pII.5.1:1-3

What is the body? Who, outside the Course, would have answered as does this
paragraph? "The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to
separate parts of his Self from other parts" (1:1). The body is a fence.
What a strange concept that is! (It is an idea expanded on in "The Little
Garden," T-18.VIII.) Its purpose (the reason the ego made it) is to keep
something out; to separate parts of my Self from other parts. The body is a
tool for division and separation; that is why we made it. It is a device
intended to protect us from our wholeness. My body separates and
distinguishes me from all the other "selves" walking this world in other
bodies.

We believe we live "within this fence," i.e. in the body. Is there anyone
who can deny that this is how they approach life, the fundamental
presupposition behind nearly all their actions? We think we live in the
body, and we think that when the body decays and crumbles, we die (1:2).
Much fear surrounds the death of the body. When our quadriplegic friend,
Allan Greene, was still living next door, with only one leg and withered
arms, and fingers black and shrivelled, dead on his hand, most people found
it profoundly disturbing to meet him (although somehow, in his presence,
many of us quickly got over that discomfort because of his awareness of not
being that body). Why do we generally feel such discomfort around
disfigured, maimed, or dying people? One reason is that it triggers our own
buried fears of the decay of our own bodies, and behind that, the fear of
death itself.

The Course is leading us to a new awareness of a Self that does not live in
a body, a Self that does not die as the body decays and crumbles. It is
leading us to disengage ourselves from our identification with this bodily,
limited self, and to strengthen our sense of identity with the non-corporeal
Self.

Why have our egos made the body as a fence? What is the fence keeping out?
Strangely, it is keeping out love . "For within this fence he thinks that he
is safe from love" (1:3). Why would we want to keep love out? Why would we
ever believe we needed something to keep us "safe" from love? Love lets in
all the parts of our Self we are trying to keep out. Love destroys our
illusion of separateness. Love understands that we are not this limited
thing we believe we are, and that our brothers are parts of us; it
constantly extends, giving and receiving, like a magnetic force drawing all
the fragmented parts of the Self together again.

Have you ever experienced, in a moment of intense love for another person, a
surge of fear? Have you ever felt like you were about to lose yourself if
you gave in to this love? That feeling gives you some hint of the abject
fear the ego has for love. The ego wants you looking for love (because you
know you need and want it) in order to keep you satisfied (and trapped), but
it never, ever wants you to find it. Love represents the loss of the ego
identity. To the ego, it is death. And so the body is manufactured to keep
love out, as a means of preserving our sense of separateness. 

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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
+ Available in book format from The Circle
+ of Atonement (Vol. 1 reprint due by end of 2004, write us for info)
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