Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-213
Lesson 213
Review 6: I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Review of:
(193) “All things are lessons God would have me learn.”
Practice Instructions
See Practice Instructions Review 6
Commentary
Every circumstance of life offers me the choice between a miracle and my own ego thoughts, which will hurt me. Or as the Text puts it, “the choice is miracles instead of murder” (T-23.IV.11:8). That is the lesson that all things have to teach me, today and every day. Which voice, ego or Holy Spirit, will I listen to in this moment, and the next, and the next? It’s always one or the other, never neither, never both. “You will not make decisions by yourself, whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do” (T-30.I.16:2-4).
In each situation I face today, this is what is going on. The ego offers its interpretation, and the Holy Spirit offers His; I choose which to listen to. I can choose the miracle, or murder. My choice determines my perception and my experience of the situation. Which will I choose today?
When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace. This you know well. When it occurs, leave not your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle instead of murder. (T-23.IV.12:3-7)
This choice is what sets me free. The Holy Spirit is always with me to help me make this choice. In each instant I can choose to learn the lessons God wants me to learn, and forget what I have been teaching myself. Let me not evaluate anything without His help.
If we could grasp just this one lesson, this habit of referring everything to the Holy Spirit, rather than trying to figure it out by ourselves (which always means with the ego’s help), everything else would simply fall into place. This alone is enough to set us free.
One thing the Holy Spirit sees differently from the ego is my body. “His Voice does not see the body as you do, because He knows that the only reality that anything can have is the service it can render God on behalf of the function He has given” (T-8.VI.4:2). When I choose to protect the body, to make it the center of what I am doing, mistaking the body for myself, I am choosing murder. I am not a body. I do not exist for my body’s sake; its purpose is to render service to God as I carry out the function He has given me in the world, and that is all. If I listen to the Holy Spirit, I have to be willing to see the body as meaningless in itself (W-96.4:4), and useful only as a communication device with which to reach my brothers. Let me remind myself that I am not a body, as in each moment I seek to hear the Voice for God.