One of the most wildly misunderstood ideas in A Course in Miracles is “I’m not a body.”

Several arguments always arise and here are a few:

Well, you need to eat.
You need to pay your bills.
You need to shower.
You still have to go work.
You can’t just ignore the body.
What about those that are suffering?
Am I supposed to just do nothing?
What about the pain I’m experiencing? That’s real.
Am I supposed to stop taking medication?

All which boil down to: “I don’t get it.”

What is needed is an experience that you’re not a body. The way I did it is the way I do everything: to experiment with an idea and to go ALL IN with it to see if it’s true or not.

To be a scientist in the science lab and to test it out in my own life, see for myself with my own eyes if this idea is true or not.

My experimentation with this idea “I’m not a body” was somewhere in 2017. I’ve had A Course in Miracles since 1992 and I knew it front and back, could quote it from memory and yet I was still identifying myself with the body, as Lisa.

I was still vacillating between joy and confusion, love and fear, certainty and doubt.

So I made a decision that I would identify completely with Christ – my True Self – the light that connects us all as one – to see what would come of that.

At first, I kept flip-flopping back and forth between identifying as Lisa on the one hand and the Self on the other hand.

And I noticed that when I kept my focus on the Self and the qualities that I felt went along with it – love, gratitude, joy, happiness, generosity, peace, compassion, kindness – that the body faded into the background. I noticed that “Lisa” disappeared (the Lisa storyline) but the Lisa body was still around, like a pet that follows you around and loves you and that wants you to pet it, play with it, snuggle with it.

This was a huge revelation! The body as a Companion, as a friend – like a pet or a car or any other object in the room or in the world. You can own it. You can be responsible for it. You can care for it. You can feed it. But it’s not you. It’s not a hated thing. It’s not an enemy. It’s just there – and you can choose to love it, welcome it, be grateful for it.

There is no longer an identification with the body as one’s identity.

At this point, there is usually difficulty with language with pronouns like “I” and “me” and “myself”.

To this day, I still tell Lisa stories and I have chosen deliberately to do it this way, for simplicity purposes. I tried speaking in the 3^rd person for a while and that was kind of funny. It was weird really. I noticed that it confused people – and so I have actively chosen to wear the Lisa bodysuit and to say “I” as Lisa sometimes to carry God’s messages to the world.

But more and more the “I” that is speaking IS Christ – and is direct, patient, present and connected.

I fully believe that the Christ Self mixes in with the personality = so whatever you are like gets mixed in and comes out as beautiful artwork – unique and genuine and authentic, one of a kind!

In my case for example, my personality is a party starter, funny and fun – I’ve always loved inviting everyone to the party and then encouraging them to jump off the cliff – go on some wild adventure with me – and so that shines through.

I often say this work is like being an undercover agent in disguise.

We are here sent by God to bring light, joy, happiness, love and peace to everyone and everything.

And obviously you’re not doing that when you’re stuck in a grievance or judgement or comparing yourself to others.

So, think on this:

Who is the “I” that is thinking and talking and doing things in the world?

Is it your “I” Christ Self that is pure light, one with all – or – is it your body identity self that has a name, an age, a gender, a storyline?

As you have a willingness to stay awake and alert and aware to the activity of the mind, you more and more can see that you have always have a choice to COME BACK to your Self, your True Self – the light in you that is only love.

EXERCISE/PRACTICE:

One good way to have a direct experience of this is to choose one principle or quality that you want to have more of in your life and embody it and apply it WITHOUT EXCEPTION to every area of your life, to every person, to every situation.

The important thing here is to make no exception.

If you decide to make an exception (for example to withhold love or kindness from someone), that’s a block in your mind that needs to be seen and healed.

I love the mind-training of A Course in Miracles because it’s uncompromising and invites us to make no exceptions. You can make exceptions if you want to stay hell, but why would you do that? Why would you withhold love from anyone?

Here are a few examples of attributes to choose from:

Love
Kindness
Generosity
Appreciation
Joy
Peace
Gratitude
Compassion
Oneness

I chose kindness as the attribute I wanted to embody as my Self when I first started to experiment with this “game” to identify with something other than the body.

When I chose to embody and BE kindness, it was shocking to see how much I hated the body, how much I despised it for its frailty, its weakness, for all the ways I felt it had abandoned me and let me down.

WOW.

As I chose to live AS kindness, being kind, I saw the body differently.

I saw “my” body the way I see our cats – wanting only love, needing care.

I also saw that it’s not “my” body. It’s not me. It’s not What I am or Who I am.

I chose to be kind. This was my firm beginning. I stopped trying to disassociate from the body and I stopped simply quoting “I’m not a body” and instead during my experimentation phase, I chose to love the body like a trusted awesome friend who was walking with me but was not me. And I chose to be kind to it.

It stopped being my enemy. I stopped attacking it. I stopped judging it. I stopped wishing it was different. I stopped trying to change it. I loved it the way I love a friend, the way I love our cats.

It wasn’t Lisa loving the body, it was the “I” – the Self – that lives in total joy, generosity, gratitude, appreciation, peace and love.

And with this shift, there was movement of the body but suddenly it was effortless. There was eating, driving, writing, teaching, traveling, making people laugh, paying bills, answering emails, engaging on social media. But there was no Lisa doing it. It was just happening with an awareness of the movement in a state of mind of joy.

The body became like a car: needs gas, needs occasional maintenance, needs a little attention from time to time, I own it – but it’s not me. It’s just a vehicle that I use to get around – but there are other ways to get around – like a plane, a bus, walking, a bicycle, a subway – and so I’m not dependent on the car and not attached to it. It’s not me and it’s not the only means of transportation so I don’t have to be concerned about it.

Same with the Self – it doesn’t need the Lisa vehicle to get around. The Self is joined with everyone as one and “I” am able to reach others and heal others through the awareness of this connection and oneness.

In this experiment, I had a chance to see that I am not the stories that Lisa carried around.

I am not Lisa.

I am the light of the world, one with you.

I am not a body. I am free. I am still as God created me. Click To Tweet

 

Love,

Lisa

Lisa Natoli is the creator of The 40-Day Program for Transformation (which is totally free!) and The Healing Cure: an 8-week online coaching program for True Healing. https://www.lisanatoli.com