How to Understand Healing

“Healing is very simple.  Atonement is received and offered.  Having been received, it must be accepted.  It is in the receiving, then, that healing lies.  All else must follow from this single purpose.  (M-22.6)”

Affirmation:  “May I accept Atonement fully today.”

Reflections:

1 – Personal Note

I worry about those of you who read this blog, and today’s passage, are true believers, and are sufferers of any illness/sickness.  I worry that you will reject the message of A Course in Miracles outright.  Or perhaps you will feel depressed because you have long ago accepted Atonement, and it seems that this passage for today would make you doubt your good intentions.

2 – Many Forms of Healing

My answer, although incomplete, is that there are many forms of healing.  Primarily, I would like for you to entertain the truth that an emotional healing is sometimes what we see most often when we have turned to God in prayer.  The Holy Spirit gives us the miracle of accepting our predicament, though not by lying down in the dust and giving up.  The Holy Spirit would have us exemplify a fighting spirit, though not of the ego (for Jesus always counsels the peace of God).

3 – Ask and Receive Healing

And perhaps we have not been as “receiving” of God’s mercies as we might be.  Often we pray, over and over, for a healing, and then we forget to thank God for receiving that healing.  Jesus notes that the continuation of symptoms is not a reason to doubt a healing.  The healing has come, and it will be received when the time is right.  When a teacher of God has offered healing from the Holy Spirit, ACIM counsels that it is a fait accompli (a completed act).  So let us remind ourselves that in the receiving come gratitude for the receipt, and see if perhaps this is an aspect of healing that we have overlooked.  Our own habitual patterns of mind have much to do with emotional healing.

4 – Ask for the Right Prayer

Physical healing, even in this world, does happen.  And this is not always from delusions, or frantic cries of denial.  Jesus would not have us caught in denial.  If you feel stopped in a prayer for healing, an inner sense that this is not the right prayer, then perhaps it is time to contemplate what is the right prayer.  God is always there, carrying us when the Way is rough.  The solution is always with the problem (an ACIM tenet), but the solution may be something other than what we superficially want.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Not everyone who asks for healing experiences what he/she recognizes as healing.  Yet Jesus has told us that healing is always certain, and to doubt this is not appropriate.  May we go as far with this reasoning as it is possible for us to go.  If our minds balk, let us ask again with our hearts.  And then let us open our prayer to receiving, because just to ask, without also asking to receive, is to fail to complete the circuit.

May I have glorious, abundant health through all the days of my life.  May I recognized that medical symptoms do not mean that a healing has failed, because Jesus says that a healing never fails to come.  I do not understand this completely, but I recognize that Jesus is speaking in ACIM of the ideal.  May I walk, with my rational mind and my open heart, as far along the pathway to accepting this ideal as I am able to go.

Thank You for being here for me, and may others similarly find You present in their lives.

Amen.

Oneness = Only Non-Dream

“Unity alone is not a thing of dreams.  And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs.  (M-12.6)”

Affirmation:  “unity”

Reflections:

1 – We Are All One

We are all One, with each other and with God.  This is the understanding of unity that I take from an interpretation of A Course in Miracles.  A Course of Love similarly stresses unity also, as well as relationships with our brothers and sisters.

2 – Elements of the Real World

We are caught in a dream (ACIM tenet), an illusion.  But there are elements of reality, the real world, in what we experience.  And unity, as well as relationship, are elements of the real world.  We will experience unity and relationship to a much greater extent when we have experienced Awakening.

3 – Unity Is behind the Dream

If we know that unity is behind the dream, we have ample reason to rest easy.  There is nothing that we need to worry about.  God is underneath all, and we are His children.  The unity is behind all “seeming,” as we are told here, and we do not have to worry about “seeming.”  We are protected.

4 – Harold Kushner

What about the bad things that happen to “good” people, as Harold Kushner has said in his book by the same title?  We are told in the Workbook that healing always occurs when it is asked for, but there may be lingering symptoms and we may not be ready to accept the healing.  These are hard passages to understand, because we are bidden not to deny inappropriately, but still to realize that the continuance of symptoms does not mean that healing has not occurred.  The healing will be there when we are ready to accept it.

5 – Healing Is Always Here

And there is both emotional healing and physical healing, and sometimes the emotional is the most important.  That is the ultimate truth of ACIM, that healing is always here.  We may be right with God with an emotional healing.  Moreover, the illness for which we seek healing may be the individual’s way to die.  It may not be appropriate in such cases to cry for a healing.  Most of us in today’s world do choose to leave for the Other Side through an illness or disease.  Advanced teachers of God, we are told in ACIM, may just lay their body aside when its usefulness is over, but not everybody is advanced–yet.  Time, which does not really exist, separates the student from the teacher.  So all will reach the Awakening eventually, though that time may take millions of years (just as the separation also extended over millions of years).  (These latter points are paraphrases from the Text.)

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I revel in Your goodness today.  This day has started so well, and I pray that this will continue.  When I am reassured that healing is always an aspect of our life on earth, then I am reassured also that no matter what comes, all is well.  Be with my significant others.  Thank You that as of today, everybody close to me is well.  And may my faith not be shaken if this is not always the experience that I have.

We live in a dream, but unity is not a thing of dreams.  We live in unity, as One with each other, and in relationship, as we experience the various parts of ourselves that others embody.  Help me to carry this paradox in my mind and heart.  Be with me as a I seek to convey these paradoxes to other people.  May the intuitive truth light upon the minds and warm the hearts of the individuals who read this blog.  

Amen.

Uncertainty in Healing = Fear and Hate

“Now [i.e., when the teacher of God doubts healing] the teacher of God has only one course to follow.  He must use his reason to tell himself that he has given the problem to One Who cannot fail, and must recognize that his own uncertainty is not love but fear, and therefore hate.  (M-7.2)”

Affirmation:  “The Holy Spirit cannot fail.”

Reflections:

1 – Fear Entertains Hate

This passage says something very solemn.  It says that when we are fearful, we are actually entertaining hate.  When stated so directly, nobody would want fear to intervene in his or her daily life.  We do not wish to hate.  What good could ever come from it?  Absolutely none.

2 – Uncertainty

Even so benign a concept as “uncertainty” leads down the path toward hate.  We who are seeking to be channels for healing of ourselves and others must believe absolutely in the Power upon which we are calling.  And the lingering appearance of symptoms of illness must not cause us to waver in our certainty that our prayer for healing has been heard, and acted upon.  The Self know more than the personal self.  The Holy Spirit does not fail to bring about anything upon which he focuses attention for the good.

3 – Holy Spirit

We use our reason for this understanding.  We believe solidly in the rightness of our belief in the Holy Spirit’s infallibility, and we do not waver in our certainty that healing will be received when it is wholly welcome.

4 – Suffering and Pain

To believe otherwise is to ask for suffering and pain to remain.

5 – Emotional Healing

I have come to accept an emotional healing as sometimes the best that we can know on this uncertain world.  But mental anguish is surely one of the worst parts of any illness.  When we turn ourselves, our bodies and minds, over to God, then do we know wellness.  The physical symptoms that may persist are not given ascendancy any longer by our minds, and we function much better.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would know emotional healing today if physical is not in the cards.  I know that the healing, of some type, is there.  I thank You that my ailments over my lifetime, for the most part, and usually, have been minor.

Be with my brothers and sisters who suffer greatly.  May their courage remain high, and may they be grounded in the certainty that You walk with them.

Thank You.

Amen.