...the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather, or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.
ACIM-W-136:18:2-3
Sickness: A Defense Against the Truth
Lesson 136 makes the bold statement that sickness is a defense against the truth. This lesson teaches that sickness is a self created device, a decision, a choice we make to keep the truth, that threatens all we think we know and are, from being whole.
We set up a series of defenses and later forget that we did and make it appear that it was a happening beyond our mind. This sickness proves to our minds that the body is not separate from us and therefore we must be separate from the truth. We allow the body to become stronger than the truth, stronger than God's Will for us. (or so we think.)
But what is truth is unalterable...it cannot change. God's will for us is happiness. When we realize who we are and Whose will we cannot escape, no matter how we try to delude ourselves, we will be healed. The mind will be healed and that will heal the body.
The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more. 137:17:2-5
Sickness Separates/ Healing Unites
Lesson 137 explains what healing is by explaining how sickness sanctifies this idea of separation we adhere to. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone. 137:1:4
Healing, however, operates apart from sickness and is a decision to be One again....to accept the whole Self. It demonstrates that only truth is true. It just removes illusions that have not occurred.
Just because we believe we are ill, doesn't mean we are. Healing is a removal of that illusion so we see the truth of our own wholeness and wellness. Healing is a shared strength and freedom. As we heal we see others healing with us. The healed become instruments of healing. We are not healed alone, thus dismantling this illusion of separation.
Choose Heaven and Put an End to Hell
We may believe there is a thousand choices we must make but there is only one. Once we see what we don't want, what really isn't real, we make the conscious choice for Heaven, putting an end to the fear of hell.(Lesson 138)
Wake Up and Remember
Once we accept ourselves as being what God created us to be, we become certain of who we are. This puts an end to choice. We must realize that previous to this acceptance we have denied our true Self. That is not a sin that requires repentance...just a mistake in thinking.
Atonement is a remembering and accepting the truth of who we are and understanding that nothing the world believes is true. Our mission is to wake up and remember and to look out at our brother and see that they are what we are too. We just need to accept atonement and the fact that we remain as God created us and all else will fall into place. (Lesson 139)
The Only Remedy
Lesson 140 tells us that curing the body with the world's remedies does not heal. They just create an illusion on top of an illusion.
Atonement/salvation/ waking up...is what heals all sickness! Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. 4:4
Only the truth of God heals and heals forever. We need not seek a cure for the body but go to the mind and seek a cure for all illusions. We are asked to put aside our dependence on external world therapies and instead turn to God and pray ( hourly) Only salvation can be said to cure. Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.
Hmm! I came across these lessons just as I needed them most.
All is well!
ACIM Workbook
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