What a joy to discover Ellen Emmet’s work, dissolving the identification with the body.
Copyright © 2016 Amy Torres. All rights reserved worldwide.
Read MoreHow to Use the Body While You Think It’s You was originally a workshop which I gave at the “Who Are You Really?” Course in Miracles conference in Cleveland, Ohio in 2012. Little by little, it has grown into a library of articles, essays, video, a Facebook page and other stuff (as it keeps growing).
Here are some tantalizing quotes about the body from A Course in Miracles:
“And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your body from your mind.” ~T-18.VI.2:5-6
But luckily, ” … the body is a learning device for the mind.” ~T-2.IV.3:1
So, “The body is beautiful or ugly, peaceful or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put.” ~T-8.VII.4:3
Reassuringly, “Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.” ~T-8.VIII.9:8
Last but not least, “The body is the means by which God’s Son returns to sanity.” ~W-5. What Is the Body?
Topic List:
The Purpose of the Body (essay) and The Purpose of the Body (video)
Death Is Just A Belief (essay) and A Happy Conversation About Death – Interview with Jon Mundy (video)
Body Health Is Not a Measurement of Unfolding
The Spark Is Still As Pure As the Great Light
A Course in Miracles and Body Image (Facebook page)
A Better Way to Say, “I Miss You”
This Is the Best Moment Of Your Life
Ask Amy: Forgiveness – Am I Doing It Right?
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ACIMBodyImage/
Living the Language of Love, Harmony & Beauty (work-in-progress)
ACIM teaches us that the Holy Spirit’s purpose for the body is to use it as a vehicle for learning, as a communication device. After many years of working with the Course, the body feels less like “me” and more like a beloved car–a great vehicle in which to get around; a “thing” that I do my best to treat well and maintenance regularly.
In my personal curriculum, yoga has been one way the Holy Spirit has reached my mind through the classroom of my body. Through my personal trials and tribulations with the body, I have tried all kinds of alternative healing.
On the physical side, there’s been cranio-sacral therapy, myofascial release, visceral manipulation, Feldenkrais, every kind of massage you can name (yes, I’m a massage junkie). Body-oriented psychotherapy has included what I call expressive-release work (see bioenergetics based on Wilhelm Reich’s work, emotional somatic healing, and EMDR (uses eye movement).
Spiritually there’s been qi gong, tai chi, Afro-Cuban motion, belly dance, Indonesian latihan, EFT and much more.
How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You is a fascinating subject, especially since the Course tells us the body isn’t even real. But while we identify with the body, happily there is a way to use it for true healing, miracles, and the Holy Spirit’s pure loving purpose. I call this practical mysticism and embodied spirituality.
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Waking up as the sun rose, two warm kitties dozing on my bed, I watched the sky gently fill with morning pink suffused with gold.
Birds chattered from time to time, and when they did, my cats switched from sleepy to alert in an instant.
Smudges, the orange creamsicle, came and purred in my lap for 20 minutes or so. Then he moved and Awesy, the oreo cookie, took his place but positioned himself a bit higher, on my chest, and gazed into my eyes.
So blessed, so loved, so timelessly present.
Spiritual teachers with non-dual leanings often say that there is no path to enlightenment. There is nowhere to get to; you are already enlightened, you just do not know it. There is no need for a technique or practice; they will only keep your mind trapped in the illusion of relative phenomena. Do not meditate; do nothing.
There certainly is a profound truth embedded in such statements. When awakening occurs, there is the realization that there really was nowhere else to get to, no higher state of consciousness to achieve. The world remains as it is, and your experience remains as it is. What shifts is your relationship to experience, or rather your non-relationship to it. The identification with a constructed sense of self is no longer there. “You” are not thinking, seeing, breathing; thinking, seeing, and breathing are just occurring. It is obvious that it always was this way; but all our wanting, striving, clinging, avoiding, and self-identification obscured this simple fact.
In this sense there is nothing to do. The very opposite: it is our doing that is the problem. When we let go of all attachments as to how things should or could be, we wake up to the truth of what is. Even the word enlightenment is misleading; it implies some other, “higher”, state of consciousness. This is what makes the statement “you are already enlightened” so confusing. But to say you are already awake, but not awake to your own wakefullness, or you are already aware, but not fully aware of awareness, makes more sense.
From the awakened perspective, it is true that there is nowhere to get to. This is why many teachers say: Do nothing. Stop. Don’t meditate. Don’t try and get somewhere other than where you already are. There is nowhere to go. Nothing to do. There is no path.
And yet… Many of these teachers did tread a path. Some spent years investigating the true nature of our apparent “I-ness”. Others followed a path of total surrender, or a deep deconstruction of experience. My own glimpses of the truth have come in periods of deep meditation, when the mind is totally relaxed and still. Then I see so clearly that there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. And yet, if had not followed a path that allowed me to drop into a deep stillness and let go of my habitual mode of experience, I would not have fully appreciated this truth.
So from the unawake perspective—which is where I am most the time, and probably most of you are most the time—there are paths to follow. And, until such time as they are no longer needed, the paths that help the most are those that develop the skill of letting go, allowing the mind to relax, releasing all effort, all trying to get somewhere. So, do not meditate with an intent to reach some enlightened state of being. But do take time to let the “doing mind” die away, to sink into your own being. Take time to learn to do nothing.
I recently took Peter Russell’s online meditation class and highly recommend it. Click here to explore Peter Russell’s teachings.
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Q: I’ve heard that the Course is against meditation. Is that true?
A: The Course is not against meditation. Sometimes people misunderstand the passage where Jesus says, “Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary.” Taken out of context, that sentence might seem to be against meditation.
But in context, Jesus is telling us that fighting sin and temptation are actually ways of staying engaged with the ego. He explains that ritualistic meditation is counterproductive: “Routines as such are dangerous, because they easily become gods in their own right, threatening the very goals for which they were set up.” (M-16) In other words, the ego is only too happy to cleverly take over meditation for its own goal of “doing” rather than surrendering to the much happier realization that “I need do nothing” but allow the Holy Spirit to completely take over.*
Throughout the entire Course, Jesus advises that we develop a taste for spending quiet time with God. There are many meditations throughout the 365 lessons in the workbook, but usually they are called exercises or practice periods (see www.facebook.com/acimeditations). The Workbook starts off with meditations that are just a minute or two and builds to a point where we are told that we will eagerly await being able to devote time solely to God. The Text and Manual for Teachers also have meditations, and they are called holy instants, recommendations to be still and listen, wait in silence, spend a quiet moment opening to His Correction and His Love, among other phrases.
Interestingly, forgiveness, the cornerstone of the Holy Spirit’s practice, can be considered an “outward” meditation. ACIM teacher Don Giacobbe, in his book, Christian Meditation Inspired by Yoga and A Course in Miracles, proposes, “Forgiveness is meditation applied outwardly toward others. … Forgiveness and meditation have a reciprocal relationship. Since forgiveness is meditation applied outwardly, the inverse is equally true: Meditation is forgiveness applied inwardly toward yourself.” How beautiful and profound to discover that the Course offers us both internal and external meditations to access direct experience of our Innocence which is our true nature. “For now we seek direct experience of truth alone.” (W-Pt.II.Intro)
It could be said that prayer and meditation are the same thing. Both require a willingness to release belief in the body and personal identity. If we can do this for just one moment, time collapses and “the memory of God shimmers across the wide horizons of our minds.”
The ego would have us form a special relationship with meditation so that the ego can feel expert and masterful. Jesus and the Holy Spirit would have us relinquish all control and discover that meditation is the doorway into our natural Self. When we do this, day and night becomes an ongoing mindful meditation as we find, “How quiet is the time you give to spend time with Him, beyond the world.” (W-164)
* Mooji’s video, “Is It Important to Devote Time to Meditation?” may help you understand.
This Q&A appears in the Ask Amy column from the July-August 2016 issue of Miracles magazine. Miracles is a well-loved staple in the ACIM community. For a subscription, email [email protected] or call 845-496-9089. Click here to purchase digital copies. To ask Amy a question, email miracles (at) amytorresacim (dot) com
Jon Mundy kindly invited me to be his guest lecturer at his ongoing monthly class, Miracles in Manhattan, on the anniversary of 9/11.
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I’m so happy to be visiting New York City in September! What a pleasure to be invited by Yasuko Kasaki, founder of CRS, to join her for a screening of an inspirational documentary called A Great Blessing. Let’s view this astonishing film together, and afterwards let’s discuss the miracle potential of every situation. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon? 2 – 5 pm with yummy sushi and snacks served after the movie. Only $25 if you reserve in advance — call CRS at 212-677-8621 to register. Seating is limited. 
This is a mesmerizing story that Mooji tells and which you, too, may love and use well.
The Yogini painted by Mooji
A great Yogini was deep in meditation. Suddenly, beautiful and melodious sounds could be heard, appearing as if from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. It was like nothing she has ever heard. She felt: this music is truly wonderful but it cannot be what I am, for I am here to hear it. The music faded away.
Next appeared the most exquisite colors, like no painter could paint; nor could any flower display it for it was not of this earthly realm. She thought, “This is, indeed, astonishingly beautiful. However, it cannot be who I am nor can it be real for it cannot appear if I were not here to perceive it.” This phenomenon, too, she ignored. Shortly afterwards, it also vanished in the presence of her deep and unmoving silence.
Shortly after this, there appeared several beings shaped as if from pure light, floating through space and smiling lovingly at her in a welcoming manner. She felt profoundly touched and filled with loving emotions but inwardly, she somehow kept her composure. “How profound,” she felt, “but this also cannot be what Is the unchanging reality, for, were I not here, who would see them?” As soon as this insight occurred, the figures vanished.
Her mind entered her heart and could no more produce any effects.
A deep silence prevailed as her mind merged inside her indivisible, unconquerable and essential being — a state know to the Yogis as Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
If you are ready, the tale of the Yogini can help you resist temptation when the ego uses spiritual experiences to try and maintain its hypnosis over your Mind.
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Q: What is the spiritual meaning of “emptiness” and how do I achieve it?
A: Emptiness, in a spiritual sense, means identity-less freedom. The ego tells us that to be identity-less is to not exist, and that emptiness is to have nothing, physically and emotionally. Actually, Emptiness is the ultimate discovery that you are not the body. A Course in Miracles tells us over and over again, “you are not a body, you are free, for you are still as God created you.”
Emptiness is an Advaita Vedanta/non-duality term. ACIM does not speak of God-Mind as Empty. But this is just a matter of semantics. The Course uses words like God, Mind, Christ, Self, Love, Timelessness, and many more, which point to the same Emptiness. Also, Jesus refers to holy instants and the Atonement.
He explains that holy instants help us step outside of time and glimpse Timelessness (Emptiness), because a glimpse is all we can handle, at first. The Atonement, which is the denial of all that is not Emptiness, undoes us completely so that we rest in God (Emptiness), our natural state. “In timelessness you rest, while time goes by without its touch upon you, for your rest can never change in any way at all.” (W-109)
As far as “achieving” Emptiness, that is unnecessary. Each of us is willfully unaware of ever-present Emptiness until grace or prayer begins the awakening process. Your question indicates the waking process has begun in you. The ego will try to “achieve” Emptiness, but this is just a ruse to maintain control. Emptiness does not need to be achieved, for It is what you already are.
That being said, some ways to discover Emptiness, are:
* Practice the ACIM workbook;
* Pray, in this way: “Help me recognize what I already am,” “Rid me of ego and replace me with You,” etc.;
* Read self-inquiry books, including Who Am I? by Ramana Maharshi, I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj and Wake Up and Roar by Papaji;
* Attend satsang. These days attending satsang is as easy as watching YouTubes of Mooji, Eckhart Tolle, Gangaji and many others. If you are willing to travel, you can experience the energy field of satsang in person.
“The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true.” (T-3.II.6:1) This undoing process inevitably purges the ego, and all that remains is the real you–Emptiness.
This Q&A appears in the Ask Amy column from the May-June 2016 issue of Miracles magazine. Miracles is a well-loved staple in the ACIM community. For a subscription, email [email protected] or call 845-496-9089. Click here to purchase digital copies. To ask Amy a question, email miracles (at) amytorresacim (dot) com
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
* * *
This poem by Mary Oliver helped save my life many years ago. It can do the same for you, if you let it. Thank you, Mary.
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