I will give you a metaphor to illustrate the need of a serious spiritual study.

It’s like you’re on a ship, and you see far in the distance an iceberg. The ship’s helm, however, cannot be turned in any direction to avoid the crash.

All you can do is plan to get out of the ship on a lifeboat, so you start taking definite actions to get yourself out of that ship before the inevitable happens.

So is with this life. At first, when you’re young, you don’t think about death, and your attention is totally external.

Well, it’s not so for everyone, and actually, when I was a teenager, I was thinking about dying a lot, and this fear of death only left me upon my spiritual awakening. But most people certainly do not dwell on dying when they are young, but try to do all they can to enjoy their life.

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However, after around the age 30, the body starts showing signs of mortality. You may, for example, notice a few gray hairs, or newly formed wrinkles.

This can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you react to it.

You can decide to fight the aging and weakening of the body, and it’s like trying to slow down the inevitable crash of a ship into an iceberg.

You can decide to ignore it, which is like closing your eyes to the inevitable.

Or you can realize the impermanence of your earthly vehicle, and apply yourself to spiritual studies, so that you get disidentified from it, and thus leave the ship before it crashes.

That’s why I’m studying ACIM on a daily basis. That’s the reason I’m staying alone on my farm, for more than four months now, living as simple a life as possible, to try to break my identification from this earthly vehicle.

The resistance of the ego

Disidentifying from the body is Not easy at all. The ego, who thinks the body to be its home, greatly blocks the progress, because it senses its undoing.

The ego is happy with new age spiritual folks who don’t challenge it much. But if you seriously apply yourself to the undoing of the ego, you will see a very different face of it.

Being in a body is so second nature to us due to our many incarnations, that even many spiritual seekers do not question this identification.

They still see themselves as bodies, and, for example, meditate not so that the identification with their bodies is severed, but so that the body gains spiritual powers!

So they are investing in death, as anything external, anything physical, is of the material of dreams, and therefore has to disintegrate with time.

Though they may say they are Spirit, many spiritual seekers believe to be their bodies – otherwise they wouldn’t protect their earthly vehicles.

That’s why spiritual masters are so rare, one of whom was Jesus, who didn’t put up any fight against his crucifixion. He definitely knew his body to be worthless, just one more object in a dream of his life.

Obviously, if you knew the body to be not you, why would you protect it?

You see what we are up against? True spiritual development is not easy at all.

Can you imagine the spiritual stature of Jesus? When I go out to mow my lawn or to pick up fallen twigs from my homestead path, even if some fly lands on my body, I automatically try to protect my body by warding the insect off. And Jesus didn’t even resist when being pierced with a spear. That’s the difference between body identification and body disidentification.

And even when you are able to visit astral realms and can control your dreams, still, even in these finer matter places, you operate in a vehicle. Sure, you may even be able to change your vehicle, but vehicle it is. That’s why when Buddha transcended the Maya, he told:

Oh! house builder, now I have seen you, you cannot make a new house for me; all your beams are broken, the ridge pole is shattered; my mind is freed from all the conditionings of the past, and has no more craving for the future.

— Buddha

Who is the one that builds vehicles for us, in this realm, in the finer, heavenly ones, and in the denser, hellish ones? It’s the part of our mind that is asleep.

This sick mind which continuously creates illusions to perpetuate the dream of this world cannot heal itself. That’s why the Christ Mind has to heal it. The Christ Mind is the healthy part of our Mind, and the Mind is One in truth.

The sickly part of mind, believing in the separation from God, believes itself to be split into millions of minds, enclosed in bodies. But the Christ Mind never left God, and can guide the sick mind through the Voice of God heard through the medium – the Holy Spirit.

God cannot reach us in this realm, according to ACIM, as God doesn’t operate in the illusion. But He created the Holy Spirit to guide us back home. The voice of the Holy Spirit is heard in silence, when the mind turns inward. As the sick mind starts listening to this voice and not the shrieks of the ego, it starts healing.

As the mind heals, the body heals too, as the body is the tool of the mind. And upon the full healing, the mind understands it itself had created this dream of life, and that this dream, together with the millions of bodies there, has no worth at all, being a dream.

It then starts to fully serve the Kingdom of God, healing other minds, until all the sick separated parts are whole and united. The dream at this stage is no more, and we understand that we are safe in God, having never left the Kingdom.

The signs of a successful disidentification from the body

ACIM is only one path of many

A Course in Miracles says that each person, when they are ready, will be guided to the right path and the right Master.

ACIM came into my life three times now, and I really hope this time I don’t let go of it. It was written by Jesus, through Hellen Schucman.

I never sought for Jesus, but he sought for me. Even when I was deep into yoga, I was made known that Christ was with me. And the reason I started studying ACIM was again arranged by Christ, and I haven’t shared the details of these stories with my readers, which I may do in the future.

But just know, that once you are ready, the right path and Teacher will certainly come into your life, without you searching for it at all. And maybe you won’t stay on that path the first time it comes to you, but it will keep appearing in your life until it becomes your life path.