The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world....It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different [from each other] and can be told apart. The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it.\\
the body’s “main concern” and “guiding rule” are its own safety, comfort, and pleasure. Another passage expresses the same sentiment and even provides the same list:
“What plans do you make that do not involve [the body’s] comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way?’ Imagine going on a vacation and not arranging a place to stay, not locating a bed to sleep in, and not bringing money to buy food with. The body is the doer on the stage of the world, and a great deal of its doing is for the sake of its own safety, comfort, and pleasure. It owns the whole loop. The body is indeed “the central figure in the dreaming of the world.”
The body, seeking of pleasure and making separation real
“The ego promises us joy through bodily pleasure. This tricks us into making separation real.” -RP
the body was invented as physical proof of separation. It surrounds the mind and appears we are in our own private prison cell. “Proving” that we are indeed separate and alone.
Pleasure is that drug that temporaily feels good - enslaving our mind to obsession with the physical-material Pain does the same thing - just the opposite.
“Pain demonstrates the body must be real....Its purpose 1s the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is the same.”
For an infinite spirit to think it is trapped in a tiny body is profoundly painful. “It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find pain....[This] is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which is the invitation to pain.”
“To you it [the ego] teaches that the body’s pleasure is happiness. Yet to itself it whispers, ‘It is death.”
Physical pleasure enmeshes us deeper into the belief in the reality of the body and the world - perhaps this ego-reinforcement is why we find pleasure pleasureful.
Imagine if you have every physical desire fufliled as frequently and intensely as you desire - would you not still feel unfulfilled?
The Course is NOT saying that pleasure is sinful or bad in itself. non-attachement
in the midst of our pleasure, to simply observe it, and understand that what really drives it is the attempt to prove our separateness,