[acimlessons_list] Lesson 261 - September 18

[Sue Carrier Roth]

Lesson 261 * September 18

"GOD IS MY REFUGE AND SECURITY."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS

See complete instructions in separate document. A short summary:

* READ the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.

* PRAY the prayer, perhaps several times.

* MORNING AND EVENING: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind
Meditation.

* HOURLY REMEMBRANCE: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment in
meditation.

* FREQUENT REMINDERS: Repeat the idea often within each hour.

* RESPONSE TO TEMPTATION: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore peace.

* READ THE "WHAT IS" SECTION slowly and thoughtfully once during the day.

Practice suggestion: Search your mind for things in this world that you
believe make you safe. Then, with each one, affirm that God is your safety.
You may want to use the following form:

<I think that my bank account [or job, or spouse, or family, etc.] makes me
safe.

I see myself living within the walls of its protection.

But I live within God, not in this world.

In Him I find refuge; in Him I am safe>.

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--see WpII.5.1:1-3).
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" (T3.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" (1:4), and not in my body nor
my ego self.

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" (Dt 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 Text
section entitled "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" (1:2), 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 shriveled, 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 noncorporeal
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 of 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.