A Healed Mind Does Not Plan

ACIM Workbook Lesson 135 – for Sunday, May 15, 2011

Affirmation:  “If I defend myself I am attacked.”

Selected Passage:

“The body is in need of no defense.  This cannot be too often emphasized.  It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish.  Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it.  For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams. . . .

“A healed mind does not plan.  It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its own.  (WB253)”

Reflections:

1 – Avoid “Driving” the Body

A favorite passage of students/teachers of A Course in Miracles.  We all too often ask too much of our bodies, driving them to produce when Jesus says that when Awakening comes, it comes with just one realization, “I need do nothing” (a quotation from the Text).  When we drive our bodies to the point of exhaustion, we set ourselves up for sickness, and sickness (according to the Text) is always some form of external searching.  We do not need this external searching.  We need only to be calm and quiet, and to turn to the Holy Spirit when we are distressed.  He will see that the distress passes, and the desired tranquility of mind and heart and spirit will return.

2 – Avoid Folly

Even after studying ACIM for years, we still may drive our bodies.  We may drive our bodies in the very act of studying ACIM.  What folly!  Be still.  Be serene.  There is no better way to be when we wish to commune with God.  (The early pages of the Text equate “communing” with prayer.)

3 – The All-Important Present

The second part of this passage is very, very important:  “A healed mind does not plan.”  If we are always looking to the future, we will miss the all-important present.  And it is in the present that salvation is found.  We complete ourselves in the present, a point made by Eckhart Tolle, an awakened individual who has published several books (including The Power of Now).

4 – There Is Always Time for What Is Needful

We want a healed mind.  And while the main work is done by the Holy Spirit, and our contribution is much more limited than His (a Text tenet), we can help by being receptive to His calls that we slow down.  There is always time for what is needful.  And our true needs are always met (see Neale Donale Walsch in Communion with God).  A healed mind is our greatest blessing, and it is the purpose behind the forgiveness that is our function, as stated in ACIM.

Prayer:

Dear Mother/Father,

May I not make plans today.  All too often most of us plan, and then we get upset when circumstances cause our plans to change.  This need not be.  I would have it otherwise today, with Your help.

May today move me ever closer to a healed mind.  I would leave defenses behind.  I would look to you when my immediate response would ordinarily be to defend myself.  Give me the forbearance to refrain from defending myself reflexively.

Amen.