1. The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet He is in you. And thus, it must be that you are not within a body. What is within you cannot be outside. And it is certain that you cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life. What gives you life cannot be housed in death. No more can you. Christ is within a frame of holiness whose only purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not, that He may call to them to come to Him and see Him where they thought their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His Holiness in them.
2. No one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him everywhere. Except in bodies. And as long as he believes he is in a body, where he thinks he is he cannot be. And so he carries Him unknowingly, and does not make Him manifest. And thus, he does not recognize Him where he is. The son of man is not the risen Christ. Yet does the Son of God abide exactly where he is, and walks with him within his holiness, as plain to see as is his specialness set forth within his body
3. The body needs no healing. But the mind that thinks it is a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His purpose folds the body in His light and fills it with the Holiness that shines from him. And nothing that the body says or does but makes Him manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for you. And such it must be that your mission is for him.[1]
As we open up Chapter 25, Jesus makes it clear to us that Christ does not inhabit our bodies. Christ is in us, but not in our bodies and neither are we! Christ is at the center of our Being, and our Being is not a body, nor can it ever die. Here we are being asked to accept and understand the distinction between our flesh and our Spirit and to accept the Sonship of God in place of our bodies. Let them melt away in our recognition of the Christ in us. Let the Holiness that is the Christ in us shine without the obstruction of flesh and all the calls of the flesh.
Christ is in us, and He is everywhere there is. Our bodies are devices that evolved from a wish to separate from the oneness of God. To separate from God, we must separate from Spirit, to separate from Spirit, we must have a physical body, a form in which to keep us separate. And it is our identification with our body that hinders us from knowing Christ and making Him manifest in our life.
When I identify with my body my biggest concern is going to be about what I eat, what I wear, the bills I must pay, my house, my car, my roles as wife, mother, grandmother, writer, teacher, and friend. My concerns will be about my health, my money, the state of my lawn and garden, the place I hold in the community and society at large. The farthest thing that is going to be on my mind is Christ who will be little more than a figurehead in my mind, someone to pray to when I have a problem, someone to thank when things go my way, and someone to cast all my sins upon so I don’t have to worry about my tendency to be dishonest, to show-off, to be selfish, or to go on rants.
Christ will be Someone who came and lived and walked on the water all those years ago. He will reign on the right hand of God in Heaven. Even though I say I have accepted Christ as my Savior and He lives in my heart, it will not mean too much to me as I go about my daily life thinking of myself as a body. This does not make me a sinner, it simply makes me unaware that the body that I seem to live in is not me, that being a human is only an experience I seem to be having, that Christ in me represents the Sonship I have with God, and that my identification with flesh and blood is a perceptual delusion that keeps me unaware of the truth about me, about God, and about the Christ who is one with me.
As long as I am ignorant of my true identity, I will not manifest Christ. I will be troubled by all the ruckus in the world. I will judge and condemn others who do not look like me, smell like me, and believe in the same dogma and doctrines that I believe in. I will live in fear of robbers and rapists, rodents and rioters. When you say something mean to me about me and my kids, I will get my feelings hurt and retaliate with something mean to say about you and your kids!
But this is not who I am, and it is not who you are. Christ is not only in us, He becomes us even as we become Him through Sonship. Where we are there is Christ, and where He is we are. He walks with us in our holiness as plain to see as the separateness and distinctiveness of our bodies.
Our minds are sick without the awareness of our Sonship. We are homesick. We long for our true Selves, our Sonship, the Brotherhood. We are very unhappy in separateness. Some aspects of it seem nice enough. But for every nice thing there is an opposite! For every thing that brings us joy there is an equal sorrow. As much time as we spend fussing over and taking care of our flesh bodies, they fail us. But it is not the body that fails us, Jesus tells us in today’s introduction. It is our minds that have been duped. It is our minds which are sick without knowing who and what they are and where they belong and who they belong to.
When our minds are healed by Christ our bodies are submerged in His light. The Holiness of Christ, the peace and love and joy, shine out from us and everything we say and everything we do manifests the Christ within us. This is not a pompous expression of Christ that would cause us to walk stiffly with weird costumes, smoldering incense, and meaningless chants and ridiculous rituals. We do not manifest Christ by refraining from saying inappropriate words, paying our tithes, and reading our Bibles every night before we go to bed. We do not manifest Christ by going about quoting scripture and pointing out the sins and shortcomings of others. We manifest Christ by manifesting the attributes of God – the goodness and grace, the mercy and peace, the kindness and gentleness that elucidate the fearlessness and invulnerability of Love.
Our purpose and Christ’s purpose is one, and when we accept this, we can relax and rest in our trust in Him for the Christ in us leads us tenderly, in happiness and affection, to help and to heal the Sonship. No longer a servant to the flesh, going about in doubt and uncertainty, identifying with our penises and vaginas, the color of our skin, our country of origin, the religions of our ancestors – we accept the Christ in us. We are led by all-knowing, all-seeing Spirit Which is everywhere and everything. I am here for you, and you are here for me, and in this way our minds are healed and redeemed, for the justice of God is merciful and mighty in His Love.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 25 The justice of God. Introduction. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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