The Course is filled with promises of what is achievable. It provides us with descriptions of a forgiven world and a forgiven body with the promise it will come to pass. If we want to take it to the next level, the promise has already happened. The forgiven world and the forgiven body are already there. We simply need to remove the blocks, the wrong minded thinking, to our awareness of them. In the following quote the Course speaks of a body’s health that is fully guaranteed, a forgiven body.

“Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body’s health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.” (W-136.18:1-4)

The Course is not saying that the body inherently has guaranteed health. The body is a learning device. It is neutral. If used by the ego it is a separation and attack device used to disturb or end communication. There are certain outcomes that seem to happen out of the ego’s use of the body. If used by the Holy Spirit, it is used as a communication tool. There are certain outcomes that happen out of the Holy Spirit’s use of the body.

The body showing up with guaranteed health and all the other “supernatural” qualities in the quote is contingent on our practicing. We must practice asking the truth to come to us and set us free. We must learn to rise above defensiveness. We must learn to let truth be what it has always been. We must realize that sickness is a defense against the truth. We must learn to accept the truth of what we are and let our minds be wholly healed. Then and only then…

“Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness (the mind) has been opened to relief.” (W-136.17:1)

“And you will recognize you practiced well by this:” (W-136.17:2)

And you will know you practiced doing all of that well if…

“The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.” (W-136.17:2-5)

And then the body shows up as described in the original quote. We have to do absolutely nothing for the body because no laws of time, weather, fatigue, food and drink that we made it obey are now applicable. But the Course continues, this protection of the body that we have obtained by diligently asking truth to come to us and set us free must be preserved by careful watching.

So what actually happened that the body shows up in this “supernatural” way? We became spirit identified instead of body identified. This must be preserved by careful watching. We can slip back into body identification when we slip back into ego thinking.

“If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick.” (W-136.19:2)

When we harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come we are back in body identification. Only if we think we are a body would we have such thoughts. We’ve gone back to being defensive. What needs to be defended because it is vulnerable? The body.

Back to yielding to judgment…

“And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either see or not.” (T-20.VII.5:7-9)

“Who sees a brother’s body has laid a judgment on him, and sees him not. He does not really see him as sinful; he does not see him at all.” (T-20.VII.6:1-3)

“The body cannot be looked upon except through judgment. To see the body is the sign that you lack vision, and have denied the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose.” (T-20.VII.8:1-2)

Finally, we have re-identified as the body if we make plans against uncertainties to come. If we know we are not a body, what uncertainties could there possibly be? So then what do we do to return to the awareness of our “supernatural” body?

“Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick.” (W-136.20:1-7)

Even slipping in and out of experiencing the “supernatural” body requires great learning, but it is possible. Let’s withdraw our faith in the shabby body we have made and put it in the promise which has already been fulfilled, of the forgiven body. Let us stop projecting our guilt all over it. Let us do our forgiveness and correction work that we might have our awareness of it, that we may be healed.