The other day I saw an acquaintance of mine I had not seen in a while, and I gave him the usual greeting, “How’s it going?” His response was, “Just living the dream!” Well, as the student of true spirituality that I am, I responded verbally, “Great”, but in my head I silently said, “Brother, you have no idea just how right you are!” This is a great way for me to lead into today’s topic, The Ego/Body Illusion.

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.

A Course in Miracles

It’s All an Illusion

One of the core teachings of non-dualistic spirituality is that this body, this life, this world you perceive as your reality are really only an illusion. In other words, just like my friend, you’re “living the dream”.

All of us in every generation in all human history are living the dream because in the terms of what reality is, based on non-dualistic spiritual teachings, nothing in this 3D realm of the human body is real. Only that which is the whole, unified field of All-That-Is, at one with Source, with God, is real. Nothing else that seems to be outside of this (which includes your body and perceptions of reality in your life), is real. It actually does not exist. It is purely an illusion, and illusions are not real.

A Tiny Mad Idea

So how did it come to this that we are living only a dream of unreality? The answer goes back to that tiny, mad idea of separation from Source, the dream we fell into as a sleeping child of God, which was the genesis of the ego.

The ego thrives, feeds off, and empowers itself on this dream of separation of all things and people from each other. Upon falling into this dream of separation, what scientists call “The Big Bang”, the Universe of illusion and dreams was born. In this Big Bang bodies that seem to be separate from each other with highly unique and individual characteristics also came into being within the grand illusion (as my friend, Brendan D. Murphy, named his book, The Grand Illusion).

Trying to understand that your body, your individual and seemingly separate life, is only an illusion may be almost impossible for most people to wrap their head around. This is because, as A Course in Miracles clearly states…

You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions.

A Course in Miracles

The Big Bang

Understanding this should give you a pretty good hint that everything you see and perceive in this world is actually upside down from true reality. The A.C.I.M. goes on to say about the real “Big Bang”, our falling asleep into a seemingly endless dream…

That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable.

A Course in Miracles

If you are serious about awakening from this dream, this illusion that you call a body, then it is time to grab a hold of this teaching that everything you perceive is but a projection of separation and guilt, thus creating a world of illusion and not true reality. Again, this concept, this knowing is a total mind-bender if this is the first time you are hearing this. But as I stated, you must grab hold of it in order to awaken from this grand illusion of unreality. And if you are afraid of losing your body, this means you value the illusion far greater than going back home to your true home of All-That-Is where there is no time, no sin, no guilt, no attack, and no judgement. You must understand that your body, the illusion that it is, is meant to only be a communication device to connect you back home to Spirit, and it is actually totally neutral and responds only to your ideas, thoughts, and judgments of what it should be, do, and have.

Again, we turn one more time to the Course for clarity on this matter of a neutral body. From Lesson 294 from the Course’s “Workbook for Students”…

My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful nor sinless; neither good nor bad. Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made.

A Course in Miracles, Workbook Lesson 294

No Fear

If this concept of your body being an entirely neutral illusion freaks you out because it is so radically different than anything you have ever been taught and entrained in during your entire lifetime on earth, do not fear. Do not fear because even though you may accept this understanding with all your heart does not mean you need to stop living your life in your individual body, with an individual name. You can still go about your daily life celebrating birthdays, grieving deaths, having compassion, enjoying all the good things, living the dramas and traumas of life, but you do so in a more serene manner. You smile a lot more.

Things do not bother you as much as they used to back when you were completely sucked into the 3D egoic-driven world illusion. And when you are ready to fully accept the truth that you are the Holy, Divine Son of God Himself, then you will gently lay your body aside, for you have no further use for it, and return home to All-That-Is and will ever be.