Part II

5. What Is The Body?

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. 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?

2. The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety, for the Son of God’s impermanence is proof his fences work, and do the task his mind assigned to them. For if his oneness still remained untouched. Who could attack and who could be attacked?⁶⁵

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. Made to be fearful, must a body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose which the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

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

5. You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. Your safety lies in truth and not lies. 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.

Footnote 65.  The body, in other words, is there to demonstrate that we can attack and be attacked, be victor and prey, be murderer and victim. The body thus “proves” that we have genuinely separated from the other parts of our Self.

Lesson 261

God Is My Refuge and Security.⁶⁶

I will identify with what I think is refuge and security. I will behold myself where I perceive my strength, and think I live within the citadel where I am safe and cannot be attacked. Let me today seek not security in danger, nor attempt to find my peace in murderous attack. I live in God. In Him I find my refuge and my strength. In Him is my identity. In Him is everlasting peace. And only there will I remember who I really am.

2. Let me not seek for idols. I would come, my Father, home to You today, I choose to be as You created me and find the Son whom You created as my Self.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 66. Psalm 46:1 (KJV): “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” This Bible verse I given a psychological application by today’s lesson. The lesson’s core principle is that our sense of where we are located comes from what we identify with, and what we identify with is whatever location we think will make us safe (“I will…think I live within the citadel where I am safe”). Therefore, if we identify with God as our refuge and security (i.e., safety), we will see ourselves as actually being located in God rather than in the body, and we will feel truly safe in His “everlasting peace.”

Personal Notes

God is my refuge and security. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination, of The Way, The Truth, The Life, in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love