On Stillness, Bodies and the Idea of Order
On Stillness, Bodies and the Idea of Order
. . . the external world is an effect, not a cause
Over the past year or so the idea that one needs to give attention to the body (as opposed to the brain or thought, say) keeps appearing. "Just rest in your body, stop thinking so much." "Put your feet in a river, keep your nose out of books."
This reflects a longing for stillness, which is healthy, but mistakes the way that healing occurs, at least as contemplated by A Course in Miracles.
Bodies are just a part of our experience in the physical world (T-2.IV.3:8). They aren't the source of experience, and they aren't the only part of experience. They aren't even the most important part of experience.
Bodies do not belong to us, any more than a flower or a tree does. Healing is not about rejecting the body and it is not about celebrating the body. It is not about doing anything different with the body at all.
Rather, it is about seeing what the body is in truth - e.g., just another aspect of experience - which naturally involves understanding that we are not bodies (W-pI.199.h).
The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbounded by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked . . . It rests in God. And who can afraid who lives in Innocence, and only loves? (W-pI.199.2:1, 3-4)
It is the mind that is disordered; it is the mind which is sclerotic and fragmented; it is the mind which is confused and cannot help but produce conflict and crisis in the world. The body isn’t here to make us happy or unhappy. Only minds are capable of error (T-2.IV.2:4), the most pernicious of which is that what happens to bodies happens to us.
This confusion of cause with effect is the source of all our suffering.
When we listen to ego, the body-as-self idea predominates. Sickness is a real threat, violence a distinct possibility, and death inevitable. Sure there’s also chocolate, orgasms and sitting by the river at dusk but those experiences comes and go, too. We can’t count on anything, really.
The Holy Spirit on the other hand brings us to stillness. It teaches us how to remember - how to nurture and sustain - stillness. In stillness, we remember we are one with God and with Creation. We aren't in charge.
Everything is okay. Everything is more than okay.
As this truth becomes clear, our commitment to guilt lessens. Judgment - which always involves bodies, ours and others, and upon which guilt depends - loses its attraction.
We remember our innocence.
The innocent do not judge. They know that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. They know everything is love or a cry for love and that the response to both is the same: Love.
When we listen to the Holy Spirit, we become responsible for creating stillness, which is Love. Not drama, not distortion, not disorder. Just stillness. We want to see only as Christ sees; we want to live only as Christ lives. And we know that doing so is possible.
. . . forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection (T-17.II.6:2-3).
Order and stillness are related; order is the way stillness looks or appears in the context of separation. Order is not a thing we do - like rearranging books on a shelf - but rather a law that we notice already exists, like how we cannot dictate what the weather will be, but we can calmly and non-dramatically respond to it.
Creativity and acceptance go hand-in-hand.
Ego needs and wants conflict and body-identification is its main weapon in achieving this. In contract, the Holy Spirit invites us to remember peace by remembering that the cause for peace is internal.
Our practice then is to remind ourselves over and over that we are not bodies. ACIM resolves our spiritual identity crisis by restoring to awareness the Voice for God as a viable alternative to ego. The Holy Spirit makes us happy now. The external world - which includes the body - merely witnesses to our acceptance of Its teaching.
Love,
Sean
When I neglect, abuse my body…this ego-mind is even more difficult to disarm. Lately I have been presented with epiphanies that if I clean up my diet, my quality of life will reflect the change. I have paid little attention to my physical health since jumping on this ACIM runaway train. Though I am not this body, it is my sort of vehicle to navigate the human game…seeking reasonable balance between what I eat and what I think about what I eat? Something. I am grateful for a new path, a path where peace, calm, quiet, and love dominate…qualities once so rare and misunderstood.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. Love this idea - "order is the way stillness looks or appears in the context of separation." In my own studies recently the idea that the Holy Spirit translates perception, including the body, into a learning device or a medium of communication keeps coming my way. Do you have any posts about that?