How to Rock a Miraculous Body: ACIM Chapter 8-VII | The Body As a Means of Communication

One of the concepts presented in A Course in Miracles to which we have the most resistance is the idea that we are not bodies. Our inner monologue goes something like, “HUH? WTF?! Of course I’m a body! That’s ridiculous. I was born in this body! It’s who I am! I breathe, I bleed, I feel pain, I get sick, I heal, I move around, I see, hear, speak, laugh, cry, pee, etc. I am my body! If I wasn’t my body I wouldn’t be able to do any of those things – I wouldn’t even be alive! What are you even talking about??”

I get it. We believe that we are our bodies, and that the only circumstance when we aren’t is when we’re dead.

Earlier in my own lifetime I used to put tremendous effort into my belief that I am a body.

I over-identified with what my body looked like, how much it weighed, what its muscle-to-fat ratio was, what size it wore, and how it compared to the bodies of others. Like, for years.

My mood and state of mind – not to mention my self- love – was often governed by the number on the scale, or whether I fit into a particular size. If the number was lower, I felt virtuous, happy, self-disciplined, relieved, powerful, confident, sexy, and beautiful; if it was higher I felt anxious, self-critical, ashamed, judgment by others, powerless, lazy, self-indulgent, undeserving, stupid, unattractive, and invisible.

Isn’t that crazy?

My first job as an adult In the 80’s was as a fitness instructor (and oh yes I did rock the headband and legwarmers.) I was also a runner on and off for many years – I lifted weights, did aerobics, step class, and kickboxing, Pilates, Zumba, spinning, African dance, yoga – interspersed with periods of being just a plain old gym rat. And much of the time I wasn’t doing it out of joy, or for fun, or for health.

I was doing it out of fear.

So when I say that I have finally cracked the code to rocking a miraculous body, I’m pretty sure I have some street cred to back that up.

I know it can seem like a pretty freaky thought, that this reflection looking back at us from the mirror – this entity that we spend so much time and energy thinking, worrying, and obsessing about the state of, isn’t even us. Not to mention the effort we put into working so we can have money to spend on feeding, clothing, sheltering, exercising, beautifying, defending, adorning, strengthening, protecting, repairing, enhancing, and trying to perfect it. (Or feeling guilty and bad about not doing so.)

Yet A Course in Miracles tells us, in about a bazillion places, that we are not bodies – and not only that – that the world is not real. That the world, meaning our whole concept of reality – including the body – is a dream in our ego minds. And that it is our belief that we are a body – and thus separate from our Creator – that is the real cause of our suffering.

Chapter 8, Part VII of A Course in Miracles is entitled The Body as a Means of Communication. It is the absolute go-to for explaining the only useful purpose for the body, which is as a communication device, while we believe we are in the world.

“In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion is.”
T-8.VII.3:4

The idea that we are not our bodies meets with so much resistance because we believe that that’s what we are – that our lives begin and end with the “life” of the body. Our ego mind – that part of our mind that believes it is separate from God – in fact depends on us doing so for its very survival.

Lesson 199 from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles is,

“I am not a body, I am free.”
W-pI.199

What that actually means is that God created us as pure spirit, like Himself. Perfect, eternal, changeless, timeless, radiant light, endless love. That is who we really are. Bodies in the dream world are temporal, corporeal, imperfect, changeable, not eternal; they age, become diseased, break down, wear out, and die.

So in knowing I am not a body, I can be in this world but not of it. I can experience this dream of what the Course calls “the body’s ‘serial adventures” where I appear to have relationships, and work, and do stuff. But I can do so with a certain level of detachment. Not disengagement or lack of being present, but with the freedom and fun of knowing the Truth and not being identified with the body AS ME.

One idea that has helped me to gain space from identifying as my body is to think of it like I do my house and my car. We use our homes to shelter us and provide us with creature comforts while we believe we are here living in this dream. The rest, as George Carlin so awesomely put it, is basically a place to keep our stuff. That’s all it is. I might really like and appreciate my house, and enjoy inhabiting it, and spending time there, but do I identify AS my home? As in, “My home is WHO I am”? or “I AM my house”? No. No matter how much we might enhance, decorate, and adore our homes, they are a possession that provides a function for us while we believe we are in a world where we have need of them. When we no longer inhabit the dream of the physical world, we will no longer perceive the need for a house.

Let us consider our cars – a car is literally a vehicle to transport us from place to place in our dream world. Our cars may have a lot of fun, cool features, or they may have nothing but a questionable heater and an AM radio like my first VW Beetle. Do I like my car? I adore it – I still drive a VW but now it’s got a heated steering wheel and an awesome stereo and I feel like I’m in a Mercedes on the Autobahn every day experiencing fahrvergnugen. But do I identify AS it? Is the car me and I am the car? No. The car is part of my dream. When I make my transition from this dream world, will I take my car with me? No.

Like a house or a car, we may do things to enhance it so that it is more esthetically appealing or will run better or be less likely to break down. We may give it certain kinds of fuel, have parts of it repaired, or sometimes replaced – so it may operate more efficiently and last longer. It’s still not us, not who we are. The body does not define us any more than a house or a car does.

We give our power away when we define ourselves or others by the tools we are making use of in a dream. As if the kind of house, or car, or body any of us has else has – what it looks like, the size of it, what features it has, the condition it is in – could actually ever mean anything in comparison to the complete magnificent brilliant perfection of who we really are in our true form as the Son of God.

The Course states,

“When you look upon a brother as a physical entity, his power and glory are ‘lost’ to you and so are yours.”
T-8.VII.5:3

Identifying ourselves or another as a body causes us to waste so much of our focus – instead of spending our time and energy using this communication device for its only purpose – to express love toward our brothers, which is also expressing love toward ourselves. A Course in Miracles says,

“You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does, because you do not regard bodies solely as a means of joining minds and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has none.”
T-8.VII.2:5-7

NONE.

Bam!

So in returning to how to have a miraculous body, A Course in Miracles defines a miracle as, “a shift in perception, from fear to love.” When we are coming from a place of fear, we see our bodies as a reflection of who we think we are. The truth is, our bodies and the state we believe they are in is just a reflection of WHAT we THINK. So if we are holding negative thoughts toward other bodies or our own, that is just another idea echoing our belief that we separated from God. We experience guilt about that and project that onto our bodies and those of others in the form of belief in disease, disorder, pain, narcissism, fault-finding, arrogance, blame, competition, comparison, self-hatred, shame, addiction, abuse.

The only tool we need to perform the shift from fear to love is forgiveness. Whenever we find ourselves experiencing thoughts about our own body or that of another, or comparing our bodies to someone else’s, or to an ideal – it means that we have located ourselves in the world as bodies and we are in fear. We can let go of this misperception by forgiving our temporary insanity in believing that we – or anyone else – is a body.

Now we have relocated ourselves to a place of love, which is who and what we truly are, and where we have never left. We remember we are infinite beings of light, and thus can regard our bodies with joy, gratitude and appreciation, as useful instruments to temporarily help us communicate – the root word of which is commune. We use the body to practice forgiveness of ourselves for believing in the reality of anything in the world except love. We employ it to reach our bros and see in them only innocence. In doing so, all that is reflected back to us is our light, our oneness, our our innocence, Our Truth.

That’s what it means to have a miraculous body.

Oh, and sidebar – yes, I still move and sweat and shake my booty. But now it doesn’t feel like fear – it feels like tuning the instrument, keeping the device in good repair – so I can keep communicating like this with you!

How to Rock a Miraculous Body: ACIM Chapter 8-VII | The Body As a Means of Communication

Thank you so much for being with me today – I hope that something in this teaching was helpful to you. If so, I encourage you to share it with a friend, or post it. If you have resonated with something you’d like to comment on, please do so below or send me an email. I love hearing from you.

I love you like crazy – and not just for your body.

Kelly