As those who have done the workbook of A Course in Miracles may remember, many of its earlier lessons are focused around meaning.  While these beginning lessons may seem simple, they serve as the foundation for one of the Course’s fundamental principles – that everything in and of itself is meaningless.  All the physical things we think we are seeing out there are in fact neutral.  It is only our thoughts and the way we perceive them that give them any meaning they hold for us.  This applies to everything, including the body.  As Lesson 294 in the workbook teaches – My body is a wholly neutral thing (W-294).  So, if it is only our thoughts about the body that give it any meaning, then it stands to reason that we can choose to change this meaning by changing our thoughts.

Like with everything in A Course in Miracles, it all comes down to purpose.  What is it for? (T-29.VIII.8:2).  It’s the purpose your mind gives the body that determines what meaning it has for you.  And as the Course points out, there are only ever two choices and two purposes your mind can choose between – the ego’s purpose, or the Holy Spirit’s. 

The ego uses the body for the purpose of convincing you that the body is who and what you are.  When you identify with yourself and others as being a body, you are identifying with the belief in separation, which tells you that you exist as a separate individual, distinct and apart from everything and everyone else. The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation (T-15.IX.2:3).   The ego uses the body as its chief decoy to distract your mind, keeping it focused on the outer world of illusions and away from the inner world of truth.

But we don’t have to listen to the ego’s interpretation.  The Holy Spirit teaches us there is a different purpose we can use the body for, if we choose to see it through his perception instead.  In fact, the Holy Spirit knows how to completely turn the tables on the ego, taking the bodies it created to keep us trapped in illusions, and using them as a tool for awakening instead.  The body was not made by love.  Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions (T-18.VI.4:7-8).

Through the Holy Spirit’s vision, the body is seen as a classroom whereby you learn the lesson that the body is not what you are.  He then guides you to use the body as a means to withdraw your attention from it and the outer world, and place it back within, where your true reality lies.  In short we could say that the ego’s purpose of the body is to keep you mindless, whereas the Holy Spirit’s purpose is to return your awareness back to the mind.

So just how do we use the body under the guidance of the Holy Spirit?  Very simply by using everything it sees, feels and experiences solely for the purpose of changing our mind.  No matter where our bodies find themselves, in what circumstances or events, we can use any situation involving the body as an opportunity to perceive unity over separation, and truth over illusion.  

Say we find ourselves in the very common scenario of driving on the road and being cut off by another driver.  Our body’s senses are going to send us signals that seem to prove the reality of the situation.  Our eyes see images of the other car pulling out in front of us.  Our ears hear the screech of tyres and the honk of horns – maybe even a cursive word or too.  Our body feels the physical sensation of the car braking suddenly, and on the inside, we feel the adrenaline and anger course through us.  Everything the body’s senses relay to you indicates that this experience is very real and involves a very real ‘other’ individual that is outside and separate from you. To the ego, this is what the body is for.  Its game is to convince you that you really are a body, at the mercy of a world and other bodies outside of you – born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders (you) to feel (T-31.VIII.1:2).

But if you have decided that you want to use the body for the Holy Spirit’s purpose instead, this seemingly ‘bad’ situation our body has found itself in can now serve as a catalyst to withdraw your attention from what appears to be happening on the outside and focus it back on what is happening on the inside.  We realise that we are in a state of inner conflict rather than a state of inner peace, and we can now choose to change our mind and see the situation through the Holy Spirit’s perspective instead.  In this way the body’s senses are used as a trigger to alert us to the fact that we have been mindlessly reacting to the situation with the ego, and remind us that there is a different choice we can make instead.

There is an easy way to tell if you are using the body for the ego’s purpose or the Holy Spirit’s.  If you use the body to relate to others as separate and different from you, that is the ego.  But if you use it to only to see the sameness and unity in everyone and everything you meet, this is the Holy Spirit.  The ego separates through the body.  The Holy Spirit reaches through it to others (T-8.VII.2:3-4). 

In the example of our little road incident, the ego responds by assigning blame and guilt to the other driver.  By seeing them as guilty and yourself as innocent, you are choosing to see them as different from you.  You are perpetuating the belief in separation.  The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, knows  that you are not different at all.  He knows that you are both caught up in the same illusion – both believing you really are bodies.  He also knows you each have the same right and wrong minded thought system, and the same power within you to choose between the two.  And so, the Holy Spirit, knowing the truth in you both, simply overlooks the body entirely and sees only the unified light of Christ in its place.

This is what the Course calls spiritual sight, or Christ’s Vision.  This vision has nothing to do with the body’s eyes at all.  The body’s eyes are incapable of seeing the truth of Spirit, being made by the ego for the sole purpose of looking only on illusions.  In truth, the body’s senses don’t exist at all.  They are as illusory as the bodies that they belong to.  It is not the body that sees, touches, tastes, hears, smells or even thinks.  A projection in and of itself cannot do these things – it is not real.  It’s just an image.  As the Course teaches us – sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless.  It cannot see nor hear.  It does not know what seeing is; what listening is for.  It is as little able to perceive as it can judge or understand or know.  Its eyes are blind; its ears are deaf.  It can not think, and so it cannot have effects (T-28.V.4:4-9).

All these senses we think we are experiencing through the body are just a part of the same projection as the body itself.  This may sound a little scary at first, but it is actually very helpful to us. Because our body’s senses are actually in our mind, we are now able to use the power of that mind to see them differently.  When we use spiritual sight, we use the vision of the mind, rather than the body’s illusory sight.  The Course instructs us that you can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you can achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable.  Learning to do this is the body’s only true usefulness (T-1.VII.2:4).

We gain this spiritual sight by practicing overlooking the images the body’s eyes are showing us and replacing them with the thoughts of truth and innocence.  That is, rather than looking through the body’s eyes at the other driver and seeing them as guilty, we remember who they really are in our mind, and we choose to see the truth in them instead.  We choose to remember that under the facade of this apparently guilty body, is the pure and innocent light of Spirit.  They may not remember it, but you can choose to remember it for them!

To the Holy Spirit, using the body’s experiences as a means of choosing to see only the truth in everyone and everything is what the body is for.  You will still see and hear the sights and sounds of the body and the ego’s world, but in your mind, you will look at them differently.  In this way, bodies become a tool for awakening your mind to the truth, rather than keeping it asleep.  By practicing seeing others this way, you will gradually learn and experience that you, too, are not this body you thought you were, but are also perfect Spirit.   

In practical terms we still take care of the body and do all the things that bodies in this world seem to do.  It’s just now that everything we do with our body, we think about differently in our mind.  Any activity we engage in we engage in with a loving and peaceful mind, and any people we engage with we do so from that remembrance of who and what they really are in Spirit.  

We are not always going to get it right.  In fact, many times we will fail utterly and miserably!  The ego is tricky, and it doesn’t take much for it to lure us back into its way of thinking.  We are still going to have ego thoughts about ourselves and others, and we will find ourselves using our body for the ego’s purposes many times.  But at any point we can remember that a change in purpose is just a thought away, and if we practice changing our mind one thought at a time, eventually using our body only in the service of Spirit will become our natural state – The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you (M-12.5:1).