Nourishment & Rest for Our Spirit

“My words call you to the eternal, to nourishment and rest of the spirit rather than the body. That your sights are set on the care of the body alone is another example of choosing an opposite for replacement.” (ACOL, C:9.22)

All of us long, all too often, for comfort of the physical body. And here Jesus encourages us toward something more—comfort of the spirit. The spirit knows invulnerability far more than the body, for the body and its thoughts and feelings can be subdued by fear. The spirit cannot be subdued by fear, for the spirit is the part of us that is joined to the Christ Self. The spirit and the Christ Self are One, and herein is the appeal to the heart made complete.

When we choose an “opposite” for “replacement,” meaning the body, we are seeing in contrasts. This seeing in contrasts was a method that the Holy Spirit used in His time, but we have now moved beyond the time of the Holy Spirit and are in the time of Christ, where a direct knowing is the norm. Previously the contrast enlightened us, but now we know without proof, for we are listening and feeling with the heart. We don’t need proof when we draw in the heart.

Jesus calls us to the eternal, and this eternal can include a new vision for the body (though he does not say so in this passage). This new vision for the body is the Christ-conscious physical form of the Self that Jesus later on calls “elevated.” This means that we can live in physical form for eons, if we so choose. We might come to understand that it will take many of us choosing to live in physical form on this earth to lead the billions back to God. The billions who still live in separation, an illusory separation (of course), but separation indeed. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus said that the separation occurred over millions of years, and that millions more might be needed to heal the separation. And if so, many of us need to be embodied, on earth, to effect this change.

Our brothers and sisters need us here in this world. We can do much good, though A Course of Love is not a call to proselytize. The people in our world will signal when they are ready to hear our truth. Then and only then do we have the golden zipper removed from our lips, and we are free to share what we have come to know.