Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Lesson 137:

When I am healed I am not healed alone… Our function is to let our minds be healed, that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God…

Once again this is a Course in mind, and sickness is a malady of the mind given over to the belief that what God created One could be and has been split and separated off. Sickness therefore is synonymous with separation and healing synonymous with oneness… We cannot be healed alone, because we are not alone.

A belief, no matter how large the scale of its acceptance, is not the truth. The body is then further removed from truth, through a series of individualizing characteristics to solidify that the split mind’s focus be limited to its specifics and needs…

The truth is; never, at any moment, did the body exist at all…

It is so easy to get fixated from and in where we believe we are, and then try to assess circumstances and change from within the very thought system that got us into this mess in the first place, because belief makes perception real to the mind of the believer. So we have the seemingly natural tendency to look at ‘problems in the body, the world and our lives’, as needing to be solved on that level… We must remember that thoughts leave not their source; the body was the ego’s ‘redesign’ of what we are. The basis of the ego’s plan to get away from the Holy Spirit’s influence in the mind was the making of the body in the first place… Remember in lesson 122: “The ego’s fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of that wish. For it is that wish that seem to surround the mind with a body, keeping separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body that was made to imprison it…”

This is the insane premise we’re talking about that this lesson prompts us to see. It is the body (ego-embodiment) which convinces us that the physical world is real. Yet the body was made as part of the ego’s plan (The Grand Illusion) to mask ‘Reality’. So it can hardly be thought to be a reliable source to gain the truth we seek.

Here’s a poignant passage from the text that specifies this dynamic in chapter 18: “From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind that made it. And these messages bear witnesses to this world, pronouncing it as true… Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, (Who we are in truth), for it is not the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages”…

Let’s be honest, every witness to the body’s reality and made Spirit to seem unreal, have come through this body mechanism… When we made visible what was not real, what was true became invisible to us… The body seems outside us, projected there by mind. Yet having identified ourselves with it, we subject ourselves to the rules of the body as if we were victim to them. Our sensory organs relay to the brain-mind the conditions of our circumstances and health. And yet, as the Course keeps restating, the body is a neutral thing; saying even that it is the one thing in all the world that does not know what reality is: “The body cannot know. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. (T18.Viii)

The one mind of God’s Son must change its mind. And it was for this purpose, that Atonement principle was give by God, in answer to our dilemma.

Here’s a passage from the text that gives us step-one for this change:To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not know the purpose of the world. You give it goals it does not have, and thus do you decide what it is for… You choose your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it had been given you”… (T-29.VII.8)

This zeros us back to healing, Now. The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind we all share, which is instituted for the specific purpose of holding Reality/Truth in mind and reinterpreting everything that we, (one, joint son) have made to separate it from our awareness, and replace the presence of mind in reality, giving it a healed meaning that unites us all in a unified purpose in God.

Practically, daily, today, this looks like forgiveness, which is of the mind, of others, for the Self… “When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would share my healing with the world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God's one Son, Who is my only Self… Let healing be through you this very day… And as you rest in quiet, be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined… When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would bless my brothers, for I would be healed with them, as they are healed with me.~

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sure love your mind Pam

danét said...

ummm~ thank you~ for joining...