ACIM Chapter 10. IV. The End of Sickness, P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 10. IV. The End of Sickness, P 1, 2

IV. The End of Sickness, P 1

¹ All magic is an attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot be reconciled. Sickness and perfection are irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you are perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you have placed other gods before Him. God is not at war with the god of sickness you made, but you are. He is the symbol of deciding against God, and you are afraid of him because he cannot be reconciled with God’s Will. If you attack him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made.

God created me perfect, so I am perfect. Sickness is not part of that perfection, so I cannot be sick. My mind cannot be sick, so nothing through which I extend my awareness can be sick. This Myron character cannot be sick. Her body cannot be sick, nor can her mind or her emotional state be sick. Her relationships cannot be sick, and her financial situation cannot reflect sickness.

So, how is it that I seem to be experiencing the effects of a sick mind? How is it that I can appear less than the perfection in which I was created? If this is not possible, how am I doing it? Into the holy mind of God’s Son, there came a thought of imperfection, and he went to sleep and dreamed of this.

I am dreaming of what it would be like to be less than what I am.

But dreams do not change the dreamer. When the dreamer wakes up, the dream is gone, and the dreamer is unaffected. As we wake up, we experience the happy dream. That is, we dream without the fear and guilt that cannot be real. Then God raises us to Him, and we dream no more.

It is important to realize that nothing has actually happened because if it had happened, we would have to fix it. If it had happened, we would have done something that we must regret, and then we would be guilty, and then we would not be perfect. If we were not perfect, we would have overcome God, who creates only perfectly, and we would have reason to fear. But none of that is possible. We have done nothing to God and could never do anything to God.

As we wake up, we remember the truth.

Since this is a shared dream, it is helpful to remember it together and share our moments of enlightenment. This sharing is part of the awakening. We share, and the sharing helps us remember our oneness. Today, we are sharing the thought that sickness is not possible, and therefore, we do not have to worship this idol, nor do we have to defeat it.

When I first began to see that sickness was a defense against God and that in sickness, I was worshipping a false god of my own making, I felt relief, but I also felt fear and guilt. Would God condemn me for my foolishness? If I wanted to make this idol in place of God, then how would I undo it? How do I fight my own will?

The first question is being answered for me. I cannot actually affect God, and I have not actually sinned. Another thing I have been told is that God is Love. Because I remember so little about love, it has taken a while for me to understand how important that statement is. Now that I finally see that love as the world knows it is not real love, but is more akin to neediness, I am ready to accept a new definition of love.

Love, in reality, is pure.

It is perfect. It has no opposite and no conditions. Love is not loss. It never hurts, and if something hurts, it is not love. God is Love and is nothing else. God can only love. I have never loved purely as does God, and so this is hard to imagine, but I accept it as true. One day, I will remember this love. And I am beginning to realize that I have nothing to fear from God.

The next really important thing I am beginning to understand and accept is that there is only God. There is nothing else, nothing outside of God. This means I am in God, even as I sleep and dream of something else. So, nothing imperfect can exist because where would it exist? Sickness will come to an end because it does not exist. It will come to an end for me when I stop dreaming it, and I will stop dreaming it because I am perfect. I am not fighting my own will, because it is my will to know myself as perfect. I am in God; therefore, I share His Will for perfection.

What does this mean for me right now? What do I do about these dreams of sickness? I have been seeing a doctor because I have dreamed of sickness, and that sickness was projected as a sick body. This means I have made an idol of sickness. I have tried to defend myself against these awakening thoughts, which will bring me inevitably to God. This does not mean I am guilty; it is just what we do out of fear.

Here is how I am using this story of sickness to undo my belief in sickness.

I take the body to the doctor, but I do not worship the doctor as my savior. I am grateful to him as my brother who is doing his part in the awakening through service. Nor do I worship at the altar of fear. I am not hovering over the body, looking for signs of danger. I am not praying for the body but for the healing of my sick mind. And if any thoughts of fear come into my mind, I relinquish them to the Holy Spirit.

This is the way I do my part to free the Sonship of the idol we have made of sickness. Having a sick body is just the outward appearance of the desire to defend against God. It is nothing to fear or feel guilty about. How the sickness itself is handled is not important. What is important is that I notice my thoughts and feelings about the sickness and that I will be willing to have my mind healed. I invite the Holy Spirit to undo what we have done.

IV. The End of Sickness P 2

² Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and cannot be known by part of a mind.

This is clear to me. I can understand most of what Jesus tells us in the Course as a concept, but I cannot truly accept it with a mind clouded with illusions. I cannot believe in wholeness and separation at the same time. If one is true, the other is not. Jesus says we must be willing to judge unreality for what it is if we want to know reality. We must be willing to overlook nothingness.

It makes perfect sense, but I also have trouble doing it sometimes. One day, I became very emotional. I had trouble understanding exactly why. I could think of reasons, and I knew something triggered it, but really, I wasn’t clear about what was going on. It didn’t help to try to distance myself from the emotional response. The harder I tried to do that, the more certain I became that there really was something wrong and that this wrongness was reality rather than the peace I had felt before.

What I did, finally, was to ask for help.

I turned to the Helpers available to me and asked that my mind be cleared of this confusion. I asked with absolute sincerity and complete certainty that I wanted this. Searching for reasons and trying to find my own healing was just making everything worse. I had to turn away from the darkness and surrender my agenda completely. I had to become fully willing to be healed, and when that happened, the clouds cleared, and I regained clarity.

It was impossible for me to know that I am His Son and beloved of Him, to know that I am cared for and safe, and at the same time to believe that I am a weak and vulnerable body in constant danger and in need of defense. I cannot see the truth of what I am while I am trying to protect myself because I cannot see truth and illusions at the same time.

I still get caught up in the ego web of deception, but I also know that I have help and am not alone in awakening to the truth. Now that I can think clearly, all this is obvious to me. I choose what I would believe. I choose the ego, and I suffer, or I choose to believe the truth, and I am at peace.

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