ARCIM

Daily Lesson 261 ~
September 18

What Is the Body?

Lesson 261: The Divine is my Refuge and Security.

What Is the Body? (Lessons 261-270)

The body is a barricade the separated ones imagine they have built to separate parts of their Self from other parts. It is within this bounded area that they think they live, to die as the barricade decays and crumbles. For within this barricade they think they are safe from the threat that they believe Love would impose on their private world. Identifying with their perceived place of safety, they regard themselves as what they believe their safety is. How else could they be certain that they remain within the body, keeping Love outside?

The body will not stay. Yet this the separated ones perceive as double “safety.” For the impermanence of the bodies of the separated ones is “proof” that their barricades work, and do the task their minds assign to them. For if their Unity still remained untouched in spite of their barricades, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be victor and who victim? And if they did not die with the body, what “proof” would there be that the Divine’s eternal Children can be destroyed?

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 in truth only Love creates, and Love can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose that the body will serve by changing what we think that it is for. The body then becomes a means by which the Divine’s Children return to Sanity.

Though the body was made to bind the separated ones into the nightmare of separation without escape, yet has the Goal of Heaven been accepted in place of the pursuit of hell. The Children of the Divine now extend their hands to reach their sisters and brothers, and to help them walk along the Way to the Gate of Heaven together. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to help heal the mind that it was made to lead astray.

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 is in Truth and not in 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 holy Self.

 

What is the body?

Lesson 261
The Divine is my Refuge and Security.

 

I will identify with what I think is my refuge and security. I will perceive myself where I conceive 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 Peace in attack, even in the name of “self-defense.”

I live in the Divine. In It I find my Refuge and Security. In It is my Identity and Strength. In It is everlasting Peace. And only there will I remember Who I really am.

 

I would come, my Creator, Home to You today. Let me not seek for idols of safety. I choose to be as You created me, and find the Child whom You created as my Self.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 26: Divine Justice

 

6. With Eyes of Grace

The Grace of the Divine rests gently on forgiving eyes, and everything they see speaks of It to the beholder. Those who perceive with Grace can look upon no evil, nothing in the world to fear, and no one who is different from themselves. Some of their sisters and brothers are having frightening dreams, and they would help them awaken, as they are awakening from their own dreams. And as they love all, so they see themselves with Love and Gentleness. They would no more condemn another for their mistakes than they would themselves. They are not punishers of sin or arbiters of retribution. The kindness of their vision rests on themselves with all the tenderness it offers others. For they would only heal and bless. And being in accord with what the Divine wills, they have the Power to heal and bless all those they behold with the Grace of the Divine upon their sight.

Eyes become used to darkness, and the light of brilliant day seems painful to eyes grown long accustomed to the dim effects perceived at twilight. And so such eyes turn away from sunlight, and the clarity it will bring to what they perceive. Dimness seems better, permitting more useful recognition. Somehow the vague and more obscure seem easier to perceive, less painful to the eyes than what is wholly clear and unambiguous. Yet peering in darkness is not what eyes are for. And who can honestly say that they want to see while maintaining that they prefer the darkness?

The desire to see calls forth the Grace of the Divine upon your eyes, and brings the Gift of Light that makes vision possible. Will you behold your sisters and brothers? The Divine is glad to have you behold them. It wills that your awakeners be recognized by you. And It wills that Its Children find the function here that It gave to them. Let them no longer be lonely, for the lonely ones are those who perceive no function in the world for them to fill, no place where they are needed, and no part that only they can perfectly fulfill.

Such is the Holy Spirit’s kind Interpretation of specialness, Its Use of what has been made, using it to heal instead of harm. To each It gives a unique role in awakening that they alone can fill, a part only for them. Nor is the Plan complete until each one finds their unique role, and fulfills the part assigned to them, to make themself complete within a world where incompletion rules. Here, where the Laws of the Divine do not prevail in perfect form, can they yet make a perfect choice, and fulfill their part in Grace. And by this act of faithfulness to something perceived as other than themself, they learn that the gift was given to them, and so they and their sisters and brothers must be One.

Forgiveness is the only function meaningful in time. It is the Means the Holy Spirit uses to translate specialness from the belief in separation into the Promise of healing and awakening. Forgiveness is for all. And when it rests on all it is complete, and every function of this world completed with it. Then is time no more. But while you are in time there is still much to do. And each must do what is allotted them, for on their part does the whole Plan depend. Each has a unique part in time, for so they chose, and choosing it, made it for themself. Their wish was not denied, but changed in form from specialness, to let it serve their sisters and brothers and themself, and thus become a means to save instead of lose.

Awakening is no more than a reminder that this world is not your home, its values are not imposed on you, its laws do not bind you. And nothing that you think you perceive in it is really there at all. And this is seen and understood as each one takes their part in the world’s undoing, as each one did in its making. Each one has the means for making or undoing delusion, as they always did. From the very instant that the choice for delusion was made, the Divine appointed the specialness the separated ones chose to hurt themselves to be the Means for their awakening. Their special ‘sin’ was made their Gift of Grace. Their special ‘hate’ became their Gift of Love.

The Holy Spirit needs you to fulfill your unique part, that Its Function may be fulfilled. Think not you lack a special value here. You wanted it, and it is given you. All that you have made can serve Awakening easily and well. The Children of the Divine can make no choice that the Holy Spirit cannot employ on their behalf instead of against themselves. Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be attack. In Light, you see it is your unique part in the Plan to awaken the separated ones from all attack, and let them understand that they are safe, as they have always been, and will remain throughout time and in Eternity alike. This is the function given each of you for one another. Receive it gently, then, from one another’s hands, and let awakening be perfectly fulfilled in each of you. Makes this one perfect choice, and do this one thing in Grace, that Everything be received by you.