"I Am Not A Body"

. . . is an invitation to be happy

A lot of us hear "I am not a body" and translate it as "bodies aren't real." Or we infer - reasonably - that A Course in Miracles is repeating that old Christian dualism - spirit is good, body not so much.

Both of those applications obscure a more interesting question: if I am not a body, then what am I? And, related to that, why am I so invested in not knowing myself? It should be obvious, no?

Although the course will also invite us to consider the "world is not real," those blunt metaphysics are not used with respect to the body. In fact, we are explicitly warned against denying or otherwise denigrating the existence or appearance or presence of the body.

The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial (T-2.IV.3:8-11).

It's okay - it's more than okay - to take an aspirin, get vaccinated, drink tea, hold hands, fly a kite and sneeze or cough or laugh. Bodies do body things. It's not a crisis.

But on the other hand, there is something about bodies doing body things that's tricky, right? It's like in the process of allowing them to just be bodies - especially with regard to their various appetites - we end up being bodies.

The attraction of the body - its hold on our attention - feels not only helpful but almost inevitable. How are we not bodies?

And yet.

In her essay "Thinking Again: What Do We Mean by Mind?" Marilynne Robinson observes that our shared cultural and religious traditions offer as the name of God "two deeply mysterious words, one deeply mysterious utterance: I AM."

. . . these are words any human being can say about herself, and does say, though always with a modifier of some kind. I am hungry, I am comfortable, I am a singer, I am a cook.

Robinson says that this "abrupt descent into particularity in every statement of this kind – Being itself made an auxiliary to some momentary accident of being - " hides largely out of sight. We don't want to see that there is "no proportion between the great given of existence and the narrow vessel of circumstance into which it is inevitably forced."

But not looking at it isn't good, either. This identification with the body - with the specific, the particular, with this "narrow vessel of circumstance" - causes problems, even as it clearly helps in some ways. There are only so many seats at the fire, only so many mouths a loaf of bread can feed. At our best we negotiate and compromise in the face of scarcity; at our worst we build bombs and go to war.

But in both instances, someone always goes hungry. Someone somewhere is always lonely.

A Course in Miracles belongs to that thread of our human spiritual tradition which resolves this tension by basically downgrading the body in favor of spirit. The body, it says, is neither spirit nor an abode for spirit. We don't want to hurt the body; we just want to forget about it, as befits what is basically an illusion.

No one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him everywhere. Except in bodies. And as long as he believes he is in a body, where he thinks he is He cannot be (T-25.in.2:1-4-3).

This dualism is carried to its inevitable conclusion in Lesson 199.

Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself . . . The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence (W-pI.199.1:1, 4).

It is okay to be troubled by this! We are not bad course students because we enjoy kites, kisses and breaking bread with friends and family. Indeed, the suggestion is that our enjoyment of those activities can be read as a clue to what we are in truth.

That is, say A Course in Miracles (and the spiritual traditions to which it is heir) is correct and we aren’t bodies. Yet those bodies are still seemingly capable of producing harmony and happiness. They are still capable of peace, love and understanding.

They can become - in a word - coherent. Is there any significance to this?

There is.

Awakening in ACIM is a gradual process - it's a learning process. This is a course, not a religion. And the phrase that neatly captures the meaning of awakening is "the happy dream."

. . . delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now. Is it possible that this is not also your will? And is it possible that this is not also the will of your brothers? (T-9.VII.1:7-10).

The happy dream is here and now. It’s not a future event. It’s not predicated on having access to a divine secret or spiritual mystery. It is this life we are living but given wholly to a quiet and natural happiness that cannot be shaken, only shared. It is not conditional on external circumstances being just so; it is an internal experience that radiates outward, through the heart and the mind. It is not personal but impersonal. Not special, but holy.

It is the gentle transition of our lives from clenched, fear-filled and guilt-ridden to free, loving and innocent. We become as little children and we become as the parents who care for those children.

The specific form this transition takes in our lives varies. But the effect is always the same - a sustainable happiness that greets everyone as brother and sister, undoing in them the same guilt and fear that once haunted us.

God knows what His son needs before he asks. He is not at all concerned with form, but having given the content it is His Will that it be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts itself to need; the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator (C-3.3:2-5).

We know how to be happy; we just need to decide to be happy. A Course in Miracles teaches us how to be, moment by moment.

The happiness to which the course guides us is not the ersatz happiness of getting what we want. It is not about comfort. It is more like being helpful when we can be helpful and when we need help, asking for and accepting help. Gratitude seems to make a difference. Gratitude for the little things - a chickadee in the snowy lilac bush, snow sparkling in sunlight - and gratitude for the big things, too - our pets and our partners, penicillin and Emily Dickinson poems.

The happy dream is service-oriented. I don't mean just going to the soup kitchen or animal shelter. I mean service more in the sense of taking care of ourselves in ways that allow us to care for others. I mean the persistent dedication to this practice, so that love might extend itself further and further throughout the world.

In the end, "I am not a body" is an invitation to remember our shared capacity for love, which always makes both us and the other happy. Together let us accept - even if only for a moment - nothing less than the happiness and inner peace which is our identity.

Love,
Sean