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How can I integrate the breath work and techniques that I am learning this week with your lessons in the Course in Miracles?
Beloved friend, the question comes from a quality of mind that would perceive a separation between the two. For only what is perceived as separate must be integrated. Know well, then, that A Course in Miracles is a teaching device aimed at a specific goal or conclusion. That conclusion or goal is the re-establishment of peace. Peace begins to be re-established in the mind when the mind is convinced that there is a way of perceiving, a way of orienting itself to its experience, that brings a greater reward than what has been known before.
A Course in Miracles was given initially to two people who had asked from the depth of their being (although they were not aware of it at the time) to be shown a way to perceive differently. A wise teacher first learns the language of the student. And the two that asked the question carried an orientation in which their primary mechanism for experience was through the level of the mind, or the intellect. Therefore, the teaching tool needed to be conveyed in a way that could be acceptable to them as the student.
Secondarily, of course, as you well know, the essential message that I sought to bring forth through that teaching device is equally applicable to anyone who may be attracted to pursuing the study of it. And yet, the Course does not seek to answer every question that a teacher of God will, indeed, come to ask. It is designed only to re-establish the mind at peace, and to cultivate within that mind the willingness to ask of what I’ve called the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit, for guidance, rather than remaining attached to its own devices for decision making. This opens the way for the mind to be guided ever more deeply to what is required to become fully re-established as the embodiment of Love.
What you have called here “breath work” is merely a next stepping stone. Those who would hold that the Course in Miracles is a complete teaching device within itself are accurate, if they understand that it was given to those who are deeply embedded within the intellectual processes, and that it has a specific goal that is self-contained. Those that would assert that viewing the Course in Miracles as a complete teaching tool in itself, if they take this to mean that there is nothing further to explore, nothing further to deepen and become, are inaccurate. View it then, as a teaching device with a specific goal, given in a way that is acceptable to those who have learned to abide primarily in the level of mind that is engaged in conceptualization.
I answer your question this way because the body, itself, is not outside of the Mind. It arises from within the Mind. And you can, therefore, look upon it and what arises within it, to witness the effects of the thoughts that are actually occurring within the Mind, or have occurred in the past, and have not been corrected or changed. Mind is far reaching. Mind is everything, as the term is used within that teaching device. It should always be spelled with a capital M. Mind also encompasses feeling. Mind encompasses the body itself. For without the Mind’s first having chosen the thought, the imagination, there could not even be a physical realm in the first place.
When you choose, therefore, to allow yourself to breathe, recognize that it is from the power to decide, that is, the power of the Mind to choose that you are creating the effect of allowing the aspect of the Mind, known as the body, to also receive illumination. To integrate A Course in Miracles with what you are calling “breath work,” and what I have addressed earlier in this hour as the way of feeling, and what, indeed, we have called for the whole of this year The Way of the Heart, requires only the continued little willingness to surrender any and all limited perceptions of what Life is, and what awakening is, and what Love is, and what healing is, so that the Holy Spirit can guide you into the Truth of all things.
For, indeed, beloved friend, understand well that what was shared earlier deeply pertains to you. Namely this: When, from the depth of your being, you have fully committed to awakening from every last trace of separation from God, when you are truly committed to not seeking for Love, but you are willing to seek for all of the obstacles that have been created within you that block the awareness of Love’s presence, then, indeed, what you find yourself attracted to, what you find yourself deciding for, in terms of the experiences that you would call to yourself, these things are the answer to your prayer. For just as my Course in Miracles came to your life, as you well know, as the result of your own longing to deepen your relationship with God, so, too, have you found yourself journeying to a tiny speck of dust in the middle of a large body of water — to breathe!
It is an extension and comes from the guidance of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the integration is simple. Decide not for yourself, but turn decisions over to the Holy Spirit. And then, take what He has guided you toward and make it part of your life. And trust, in faith, that all these things are not without purpose. Ask only that every aspect, every tiny corner of your Mind become so illuminated, so healed, that only Christ abides where even there seems to be the body.
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