OrEd-T-18.9-Purpose of the Body.1
71. Can we know ourselves as an idea if we see ourselves within a body? Everything I recognize I identify with externals. I cannot even think of God without some form I think I recognize. The body was made to limit the unlimited Son of God. For the body is a limit on love. It is the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited.
72. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. The body draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven splintered from the whole. And I proclaim that within that circle is my kingdom, where God cannot enter. The body cannot know. And while I limit my awareness to the body's tiny senses, I will not see the grandeur which surrounds me. God cannot come into a body, nor can I join Him in a body. Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out and keep me apart from Him.
73. Within this kingdom the ego rules cruelly. The ego tells me to fight against the universe to defend this little speck of dust. This insane fragment of my mind is such a tiny part of the whole that, if I could know the whole, I would see that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, the tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun, and the tiny ripple calls itself the ocean. How alone and frightened is this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart from the universe. The sunbeam's 'enemy', the sun, would devour it, and the ocean would swallow the little ripple.
74. Yet neither the sun nor the ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not exist apart. And what that segment thinks it is, in no way changes its total dependence on them for its being. Its existence remains in the sun and ocean, in the whole.
75. Those living in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be in a strange position. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected thought living alone, and not joined to the Thought which created it. Those in bodies have no life or meaning apart and by themselves. Yet, each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing each other for only a few things, and without meaning by themselves. Those in bodies are not totally dependent on their one Creator for everything, or need the whole to give them meaning.
76. Like the sun and ocean, my Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself as myself. This tiny part is not missing. It could not exist if it were separate, nor would the whole be whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. It leads no separate life because its life is the oneness in which its being was created.
77. I will not accept this little fenced-off aspect as myself. The sun and ocean are nothing beside what I am. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet neither the sun nor the ocean has the power that rests in me. Would I remain within my tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys looking on nothing, yet who would die to defend it? This little self is not my kingdom. Arched high above it and surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, offering all its happiness and deep content to every part, including the little aspect I think I set apart.
