5. What Is the Body?

Journey through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick Lesson 261

5. What Is the Body?

As I mentioned earlier, Jesus makes some of the same points here that he made in “What Is Sin?” and “What Is the World?” The body is purposive, the capstone of the ego’s strategy and the final step in its plan to keep the Son of God mindless. This mindlessness ensures the ego will be forever safe from the Son’s mind choosing love over separation. The summary begins with the image of a fence we saw in “The Little Garden”:

The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not (T-18.VIII.2:5-6).

(1:1-2) The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles.

This “fence” – the body – keeps me separate from you. You have your physical and psychological space, I have mine, and the two cannot coexist in the same place. Being the embodiment of the ego, the body loudly proclaims that separation is the truth: We are not one, but separate, for bodies do not join. Indeed, for opposite reasons, Jesus tells us the same thing: “Minds are joined, bodies are not” (T-18.VI.3:1). Moreover, bodies were made not to join. The joining we believe occurs is only the fulfillment of our thoughts of specialness. This of course is not the joining of forgiveness of which Jesus speaks, and which reflects the completion of Heaven:

Seek not for this [completion] in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain and where everything fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon all illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept completion, and only this, there is God completed, and His Son with Him (T-16.IV.9:4-6).

Jesus now turns to the ego’s two-fold purpose in making the body:

(1:3-5) For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside?

The ego does not know what love is, which is why Jesus continually tells us he cannot really speak to us of God, Heaven, or truth. Yet the ego does know that if the Son of God chooses love, individuality will disappear. This is the ego’s fear. Its strategy, therefore, culminating in the body, is to keep itself safe – not from love, but from the decision-making power of the Son’s mind. Thus the ego wants to keep us mindless, for if we do not know we have a mind, how can we ever change it? And if we cannot change our minds, we can never choose God’s Love over the ego’s hate; His Oneness over the ego’s separation. Therefore, once we choose the mindless body we become the body. This is the ego-body equation of which the early chapters of the text speak; for example:

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Journey through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick Lesson 261

The body is the ego’s home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe ... (T-4.V.4:1-2).

Before we choose the body, however, our safety is the ego’s thought system, with which the Son of God first identifies. Thus we are no longer Christ, nor even a decision maker, but the individual selves that have become the thought system of individuality. Once projected, this thought system becomes the body, and we are now individual, separated, and physical selves, with no memory that our bodily existence is a defense. We have forgotten what we split off from – the mind; and remember only what we have split off to – the body. We are what we chose to identify with, ensuring that the Love of God remain a very distant memory.

Jesus now turns to the second way the ego uses the body as means of securing its existence.

(2:1-2) The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety.

The first safety, again, is that the mindless body keeps us safe from choosing love. The second safety is that the body’s death – “The body will not stay” – proves God is wrong and we are right. Thus, the body first ensures the survival of our individual identity and keeps God’s Love forgotten. Second, it proves that death is real, which means that eternal life is an illusion. Once again God is shown to be a liar:

... the body’s vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly (T-4.V.4:2-3).

Here is how this ego strategy works:

(2:3) For the Son of God’s impermanence is “proof” his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them.

The body does exactly what the mind wants it to do. Its impermanence proves the mind’s defenses work and the ego’s strategy has succeeded. We are mindless bodies, which establish that the separation from God is a fact. Thus God cannot exist, because perfect wholeness cannot contain thoughts of separation.

(2:4- 8) For if his oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be victor? Who could be his prey? Who could be victim? Who the murderer?

If the Atonement principle is true, which means God’s Oneness remains untouched—”not one note in Heaven’s song was missed” (T-26.V.5:4) – there is no duality, and no victim and victimizer. If oneness is the truth, I do not exist, because I can exist as an individual only by having first attacked God, making me the victimizer and God my victim; I the victor and God my prey. The ego quickly reverses this through projection, and now God becomes the murderer and I His prey. However, it makes no difference because either way the living Oneness of God has been obliterated, at least in our memory. Thus does the body prove the ego right, even though the body dies, for to the ego both dreams are true – victim and victimizer. Recall this passage from the text:

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Journey through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick Lesson 261

A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murderer who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be lingering and slow; of this you dream. Yet underneath this dream is yet another, in which you become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer of your brother and the world alike (T-27.VII.12:1-2).

(2:9) And if he did not die, what “proof” is there that God’s eternal Son can be destroyed?

Despite its inherent insanity the ego is fiendishly clever, for since we are not aware of its strategy we cannot see its patent deception. Jesus explains in the text (T-4.V.4) that the ego tells us to leave the mind and go into a body where we will be safe, escape God’s punishing wrath, and never die. If we stay in our minds, the ego warns, God will certainly annihilate us. We, as God’s one Son, take the ego’s advice and hide in the body, only to find that the body does indeed perish. As Jesus explains, the Son then confronts the ego and says: “What gives? You told me I would be safe in my body and I believed you. Yet now that I am here, my death is as certain as if I had remained in the mind. You say this death is God’s punishment, which you promised I would escape.” As Jesus explains, the ego’s response is to obliterate the question from our objecting mind. In other words, we can no longer question the ego because we have totally forgotten the mind in which the ego’s strategy was planned and accomplished.

Having caused a veil to fall across the Son’s mind, blotting out all memory of how and why the body was made, the ego ensures he will forget the body’s specific purpose, with no memory of its source. Even if we are regressed to the moment of birth, the birth canal, the womb, or even the egg and sperm, we still have no memory of the mind from which we came. No matter how many past lives we may access, no recollection remains of the mind the ego has obliterated from our remembrance. Thus is the ego allowed to lie and lie and lie yet again, for we have forgotten that the current lie was a defense against the previous one, which defended against the lie that came before that. By the ego’s making us forget what preceded our existence, we have no way of questioning its strategy. Thus, to review – on the one hand the ego says the body will protect us, and on the other it says the body will die, as will we. However, I – the ego – will live on.

Therefore the ego has us believe, as this paragraph states, if oneness were the case we would not exist. Once this is established in our minds as a pattern, we relive it over and over as bodies. We continually victimize others, above all by having it appear as if they are victimizing us. As paradoxical as it may seem, the greatest victimizers are the innocent victims, because they are the ones the world never suspects. Yet are we all victimizers and victims to each other, because we are split-off parts of the same victimizing and victimized thought. Again, Jesus shows us the ego’s strategy for what it is. If we could ever look at it, we would realize its absolute insanity. Not only is the ego vicious, unkind, and merciless to us and everyone else, it is insane – part of its plot to have us believe that what is true does not exist, and what does not exist is true. Our practice, thus, involves first understanding the concepts of the ego’s thought system of deception, and then observing without judgment how our daily lives exemplify them.

(3:1-3) The body is a dream. Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear.

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Journey through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick Lesson 261

We experience happiness when our special love objects work well for us, but we have learned that every dream is born of fear, including the cosmic dream of the physical universe. When we choose to be in a state of love, however, fear is impossible, for “perfect love casts out fear.” The opening of “The Gifts of God” clearly articulates the dream’s fearful origin, and its undoing through acceptance of God’s gift of love. It deserves another reading:

Fear is the one emotion of the world. Its forms are many... but it is one in content. Never far, even in form, from what its purpose is, never with power to escape its cause, and never but a counterfeit of joy, it rests uncertainly upon a bed of lies. Here it was born and sheltered by its seeming comfort. Here it will remain where it was born, and where its end will come.... If you were certain...

fear would be laid aside as easily as joy and peace unite on love’s behalf. But first there must be certainty that there can be no love where fear exists, and that the world will never give a gift which is not made of fear, concealed perhaps, but which is surely present somewhere in the gift. Accept it not, and you will understand a gift far greater has been given you (The Gifts of God, p. 115).

(3:4) Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it.

Everything in the world is a projection of thought, and since ideas leave not their source, and the key thought in our minds is fear – coming from sin and guilt – the body embodies fear. Indeed, we all live in fear, potential or actual. If we do not get enough oxygen or food, for example, the terror rises in our hearts; when our specialness needs are not met, fear of loss is inevitable.

(3:5) But we can change the purpose that the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

The all-important theme of purpose returns. Once again, Jesus is not asking us to deny our bodies, but simply to choose him as our teacher. Thus will we learn the proper use of the body – a classroom to help us question the ego’s purpose and change our minds.

This is the question [What for?] that you must learn to ask in connection with everything. What is the purpose? Whatever it is, it will direct your efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort; a decision that will remain in effect unless you change your mind (T-4.V.6:8-11).

(4:1) The body is the means by which God’s Son returns to sanity.

The body is the means because it is the only thing we know, being unaware of the mind. Jesus helps us understand, however, that what we feel and perceive with our bodies are projections of the mind’s thoughts. Even more to the point, they are projections of a wish that we be proven right and God wrong – the ego’s ultimate purpose for the body. Indeed that is the purpose of the body’s death – to allow us to say to God: “Eternal life is a lie. You are wrong again.” Yet can the body’s purpose be changed – the goal of these lessons – as we read again:

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Journey through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick Lesson 261

(4:2) Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell.

The body does not change; the mind’s purpose has changed because we have changed its teacher.

(4:3-5) The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill.

It is not difficult to see that the body’s purpose is to perpetuate the principle of one or the other: my body exists at the expense of yours; I do not walk to Heaven with you, but on top of you – I put you down so I become superior. The body was specifically made so we could project our guilt and sin onto others, making them the ones God will ultimately punish, not ourselves who have become the innocent victims. Thus the ego uses the body to attack with; pushing others into the sludge of sin, so we can ascend to Heaven on the wings of innocence. When we turn to Jesus, however, he helps us realize we cannot return home, nor remember God’s Love if we hold a grievance against anyone. To do so makes real the thought system of sin, but seen in others, not ourselves. We thus exchange the principle of one or the other for “together, or not at all” (T-19.1V-D.12:8):

Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting everything we thought we heard; remembering how much we do not know. This brother neither leads nor follows us, but walks beside us on the selfsame road. He is like us, as near or far away from what we want as we will let him be. We make no gains he does not make with us, and we fall back if he does not advance. Take not his hand in anger but in love, for in his progress do you count your own. And we go separately along the way unless you keep him safely by your side (T-31.II.6:4-9).

The body is not holy in itself, as attested to by Jesus’ many references to it as mere dust, but is made holy because of the purpose given it by the right mind.

(5:1-2) You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you.

We believed our individual self was safe with the ego, and, again, at that moment we no longer had chosen the ego thought system of separation, we became it:

The concrete part [of the mind] believes in the ego, because the ego depends on the concrete. The ego is the part of the mind that believes your existence is defined by separation (T-4.VII.1:4-5).

On the other hand, when we realize the ego has lied and cannot make us happy, we gratefully choose Jesus as our teacher and his love as our identity – the choice for real safety. As we continue our journey, we learn to accept that identity and none other.

(5:3) Your safety lies in truth, and not in lies.

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Journey through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick Lesson 261

This is the principle of the Atonement. We, however, told the Holy Spirit that we do not believe Him, for our safety lies not There but in our separated self—the ego and its cherished body.

(5:4-8) Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self.

On a practical basis this means identifying with love by reflecting it throughout the day: recognizing that you and I do not have separate and conflicting purposes. Thus does forgiveness establish the awareness of our shared goal: finding the “ark of safety” in which is found the fulfillment of God’s promise to His Son. We close with the following passage on this newly chosen purpose for the body:

Your home is built upon your brother’s health, upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the Foundation of his home. The winds will blow upon it and the rain will beat against it, but with no effect. The world will wash away and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not within itself alone. It is an ark of safety, resting on God’s promise that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God’s Son unto his home. And with this holy purpose is it made a home of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father’s Will with you (T-28.VII.7).