All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of waking up.
ACIM-T-8:IX:3:2
I woke up tired this morning after about four hours of sleep, with a headache. I want to crawl back into bed but I need to clean this house before my yoga classes today. Sigh!
Learning About Illness Perception From My Dog
Last night we had to take our dog to the animal hospital two hours away. She was in Addisonian crisis ( we didn't know she had Addison's). Addison's is a disease that effects the adrenal glands and leads to an inability to produce enough steroids needed to fight inflammation among other things and aldosterone which is needed to keep fluid in the body. Over the last two days, I was concerned by her lethargy and lack of appetite but what really got me were how her once healthy gums suddenly appeared to be fiery red and inflamed. I mean red! Even though she didn't seem to have a fever, I feared it was a serious bacterial infection that was becoming systemic thus the anorexia and lethargy...so that prompted the emergency visit at ten O Clock at night to the only clinic in the province open 24 hours.
Can you hear the fear and drama when I talk about this illness. We tend to add these two elements to any discussion or thought of illness, don't we?
When we got there her gums seemed to be the least thing of concern for others. The vetenarian staff had seen worse and I probably seemed like an over dramatic dog mother making too much of the minor. I was almost embarrassed about insisting we bring her in and was apologizing to D. for another failure in my gut instinct that said something was wrong when the vet came down with the news.
It didn't turn out to be a serious bacterial gingivitis. It was worse.
Thanks to the sharp diagnostic ability of the vet we seen ...she was diagnosed and treated quickly before things started to shut down. In the end, I see the gum inflammation was just her body's way of saying...she couldn't produce enough of her own natural anti-inflammatories! I realize now that though they were not the medical emergency I thought they were, if I didn't notice them and if I wasn't concerned about them we might have waited until Monday...in which case there would likely have been a fatal outcome. Thank God for those red gums!!
The Human Need For Illness Passed Onto our Pets?
What was ironic about this, was that my dog had no idea what diagnostic label was placed upon her, nor did she care. She had no idea her gums were red and that her adrenal glands were shutting down. She did not see herself as sick even though her body showed obvious signs of illness. "Sickness" is not a thought a dog holds in their head, is it? It is like we as humans are manifesting disease onto our beloved pets ????
You see, there was a very brief time in my life that others thought I might have adrenal insufficiency and that it was the cause of my bradycardia, hypotension and fainting. I was even prescribed flourinef which I didn't end up taking. I didn't take it because I knew my potassium tended to be too low most times, rather than too high as it is in Addison's, and the last thing I needed was for it to go down further. Anyway, I just thought that was ironic how my dog was getting a label that was nearly placed on me...like it had to go somewhere in this learning puzzle. The experience brought me back to how I looked at illness then and still do, obviously, now.
Though my dog isn't, I am ascribing to ego's old doctrine of illness...big time.
It is challenging to break free of it...to see that we can get beyond our physical limitations to a place/state of mind where there are no limitations. It just seems like magic to be able to do so...impossible magic.
Yet that is what A Course calls a Miracle and teaches that we are all capable of miracles. It instructs, throughout its many text and workbook pages, that the only thing that limits us or makes us sick is of the mind, a perception and an adherence to a worldly belief system.
Yet it is one so many of us adhere to and believe to our dying day to be the only reality. It seems so "normal" to believe that attack, illness, suffering and death are unavoidable things in our experience out to get us, that we will always be vulnerable to, that we cannot escape. It seems that "fear" in its many, many forms, then, is a given for humanity and something we just need to accept, listen to and obey.
Questioning Ingrained Belief
To think differently than this or to even have the audacity to question such a thought structure is considered completely abnormal, somehow "blasphemous," and insane. How can we prevent or stop the body from getting sick? How can we heal the body without external measures like medicine after it gets sick? It is just not possible, is it? We are at the mercy, we believe, of ancient viruses and bacteria, random cell mutation, environmental or cellular trauma, and our genes, right? Our avoidance of getting sick, if we are lucky enough to do so as we progress through our life cycle has to be due to our vigilant "fight against" these things, our collaboration with medicine and/ or just a stroke of " pure luck"...nothing more.
We are just so vulnerable to illness. Or are we?
A Course and many other spiritual doctrines teach that we need not succumb to fear, to suffering, to illness and even this idea we have of death. We can instead "wake up" to the truth of who we are seeing that there is a higher power within us that sees no harm but heals when we "believe" or "perceive' we have been harmed. It is "wrong perception" that creates illness...a distorted belief that it can be so, not the reality of who we are. It is a change in that perception to miracle-mindedness that will heal us.
Reality is Harmless
Our reality is harmless The reality of everything is totally harmless, because total harmlessness is the condition of its reality.ACIM-T-8:IX:2:2 Adhering to this, rather than ego's mixed up version of reality, will keep us healthy and whole, the way we are.
What we need then is not necessarily diagnostic labels, drugs and external treatments, (which definitely serve an important function while we still succumb at all to any of ego's thought structures about illness....as many of us will do to one degree or another until the day we die) but faith. Replacing tired old beliefs with Faith can indeed save us. As long as we believe in sickness and have little faith in miracles we will get sick and we will not heal.
We need Faith!!!
For truly, I say to you, if you have Faith like a grain of a mustard seed , you will say to this mountain "move from here to there" and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17: 20 ESV
Great healing can happen with faith,
Then Jesus answered, "O woman, Great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly. Matthew 15:28 ESV
Miracles happen all the time
I know that when we hear of people spontaneously healing from life threatening diseases or bodily limitations without medical intervention, we call it a fluke of nature, a lucky coincidence, an improperly labelled condition. We find it so hard to believe. We discount it. Analyze it scientifically or dismiss it as a lie. We even fear what accepting that possibility could mean about the way we see the world at large. We often refuse, then, to consider the possibility that there could be more to us than the limited vulnerable version we buy into. We would rather live fearfully following the ego's guidance, be sick and to suffer than to wake up to who we really are.
We fear our own magnificence.
Yet there are so many occurrences out there of people who were guided past this fear, woke up and were able to express their own magnificence and thus heal against insurmountable odds! It does happen. Two such cases are that of Eben Alexander III and Anita Moorjani. You need to read their stories.
What we can learn from them and all the wonderful teachings out there...is that illness is not our birthright! It is not what is intended for us. It is only because we see wrongly that we suffer and become ill.
Another Way to Look
There is another way to look at the world and our selves. There is another way of looking at the body that is more real than what we experience now. The miracle of healing is possible for all of us when we see ourselves beyond our bodies and mind. When we see we are spirit above all else. Are you willing to at least consider that possibility.
Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels...By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment. This places spirit at the center, where it can communicate directly. ACIM-T-1:I:23 & 30
Begin Now
Though ending this fear and accepting a new reality of miracles may take a life time for many of us to accomplish, we can begin today by at least becoming willing to address this fear we have of waking up, of looking beyond to a possibility of something greater. We can exchange our belief in illness for faith in the power of our wellness.
Begin now.
All is well
ACIM
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