PART II. SECTION 5: WHAT IS THE BODY?
Lesson 270 I Will Not Use The Body’s Eyes Today
- Father, Christ’s vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body’s eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it then sight can give. The world forgiven signifies Your Son acknowledges His Father, lets his dreams be brought to truth, and waits expectantly the one remaining instant more of time which ends forever, as Your memory returns to him. And now his will is one with Yours. His function now is but Your Own, and every thought except Your Own is gone.
- The quiet of today will bless our hearts, and through them peace will come to everyone. Christ is our eyes today. And through His sight we offer healing to the world through Him, the holy Son whom God created whole; The holy Son whom God created one.[1]
Notes and Personal Application: Today while James and I were taking our morning walk a beautiful doe leapt toward us spiritedly and then turned and sprang through our neighbor’s field in such a naturally elegant way. It was a gorgeous fall day here in central Pennsylvania. The air smelled clean and crisp. The sky above an early autumn blue; cotton ball clouds offering no hint of shadow or storm, the sun splashing a golden hue across the trees and grass.
Our prayer reminds us of how glorious and gracious the world is even while we perceive with eyes of flesh. Imagine how much more glorious and gracious when we experience the certainty of God, the promise of forever, the love and joy and peace that passes all understanding!
Today as we calm our hearts and clear the altar of our minds of all that would distract us from our path to God, let us not use our eyes but the eyes of Christ. Let the peace that comes only through forgiveness fill our hearts and flow from us to all the world. When we ask God to take our eyes and give us the eyes of Jesus, we see our fellow creatures as ourselves. No part of Creation matters more and no part matters less. In God’s Kingdom we do not prey upon and devour creation nor fear victimization, starvation, or any of bodily concerns. With God we live in peace and harmony with a healed and restored Creation that carries on in love forever!
As the deer ran toward us this morning, I was so struck by her gracefulness; her friendliness; her beauty. I had the distinct impression that she wanted to play. When she stopped in her tracks and ran off the other way, she was no doubt remembering that humans are dangerous playmates. My heart went out to her for she and her kind are “in season” soon and they will be hunted for meat, for trophy heads, for their velvet covered antlers.
This is the nature of this world. No matter how civilized we think we have become, no matter how many advances in medical technology, no matter that we have electric cars and have put astronauts into space, what we call life in the body is precarious and uncertain. Understanding this, we must be very clear about what we are doing today. We are electing to no longer use the body’s eyes to comprehend the things of God. In the example of the doe this morning, when we see the world through the eyes of Christ, we are not thinking venison, we are not thinking “poor deer,” we are not thinking “wicked, depraved hunters,” we are not engaging in the world of form – we forgive the world of form which puts us in these kinds of quandaries! We do not waste our time getting caught up in the things that are wrong about the world. When we see the world through the eyes of Christ instead of our earthly eyes, we are looking at the world as we know it and experience it only as a tool to teach us about separation. We are the prodigal son with his eyes opened. He wakes up in a pigsty, separated from his father, starving, friendless, filthy, and broke – and he remembers who and what he is. He sees the pigsty for what it is – not his home, not his destiny, and certainly not his identity. And he starts the journey home. With the eyes of Christ we are in the same position. We see the nature of the separated world clearly for exactly what it is. We are not going to call a pigsty a palace or a mansion; we are not going to call in the professional cleaners to try to clean it up or change it into something else; we will not deny the filth, the stench, the conditions that goes on it, we are going to see past it to who and what we really are and move toward that.
Just as there is no point trying to clean up a pigsty, we have no reason to get ourselves worked up into a tizzy over any particular injustice or crime against creation in the separated realm. When we no longer look upon the world with the body’s eyes, we can no longer see its separateness as real. We see beyond to oneness. We see beyond to wholeness. We see that the world as we know it now as the symbol of the ego in which it is. It can no longer cause us to worry, fret, and sorrow for we are looking through a different lens!
Let the eyes of Christ transform the world that our body’s eyes would behold today. We can do this with faith, with quickened understanding, and with our daily practice of return.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 270. will not use the body’s…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 230
Audio credit: the friar patch at www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 