ACIM Chapter 11. II. The Invitation to Healing, P1
ACIM Chapter 11. II. The Invitation to Healing, P1
II. The Invitation to Healing, P1
1 If sickness is separation, the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step toward recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The Son of God has both Father and Son, because he is both Father and Son. To unite having and being is to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself. And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but one Will. Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom your understanding is not perfect, and what you really want is therefore lost to you.
This beginning paragraph is so important that I want to take it slowly and really look at it. “Jesus, please give me clarity as I read.”
“If sickness is separation”
Right away, Jesus is telling us that sickness is separation. I think I am separate from God, from my brothers, from every other living form in the world. I even see separation within myself if I perceive myself as both spirit and body, both good and bad, both holy and condemned. Clearly, everyone who is having this experience believes in separation, and so sickness is inevitable until we change our minds.
“the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step toward recognizing what you truly want.”
We made a decision to experience separation, the consequence of which is sickness. The first step to undoing these consequences is to make a different decision. We can now decide to heal and to be healed. We may make this decision because we are tired of sickness, but it is the first step toward recognizing what we truly want. That is, we want more than to be less miserable, less lonely, less poor, and less ill; that is to be less sick. In choosing to heal and be healed, we will recognize our true desire.
“Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer.”
Another important statement for those of us who are ready to Awaken from the dream of separation: attack will take us away from what we truly want. Every attack thought moves us away from healing. On the other hand, every healing thought brings us closer. Here are a couple of examples.
I was frustrated and then angry with the doctor’s office because they didn’t give me what I wanted. That was an attack thought. Yesterday, I noticed that I forgot to write on my calendar the time of an appointment and felt upset with myself. That was an attack thought. I saw the feelings that came up when I had these thoughts, and I realized I had just chosen separation again as I attacked, first, a brother and then myself for my error.
I see myself here in this body because I chose separation as an experience I wanted to have.
For the last two days, I have made that same choice again. I made it when I thought I would be happier if I got my way and when I thought I was an idiot for not being better at keeping track of things. Both times were attacks and led me deeper into the illusion, into sickness.
Each time I noticed how I felt when I attacked, I realized the attack cost me my peace of mind, and I made a different choice, a choice for healing. I released the thoughts of separation and attack to the Holy Spirit, and I asked for healing. It is not God’s Will that I suffer sickness of the mind, and so I need only relinquish the ego desire for a separate will and accept that God’s Will is truly my will in order to be healed. My mind then returns to peace. And now I am closer to what I truly desire.
“The Son of God has both Father and Son, because he is both Father and Son.”
Jesus keeps telling us that we are an extension of God, that this is the way God creates, this extending of Himself. He also has told us that God gave all of Himself to us in our creation. Still, for a long time, when I read something like this sentence, I recoiled from it. That reaction is the ego mind that cannot, and does not, believe I am so exalted. It thinks this is blasphemy, and it’s fear is increased at the thought.
But I am not the ego. I am God’s Son, and I am in God and part of God. I have both Father and Son in me, and so I am both Father and Son because having and being are the same in truth. The me that wanted to skip over that sentence is the separated self, the ego. The me that finds it thrilling to embrace it is the part of the mind that retains an ancient memory of being that. It is not a separated self but part of a Whole. It is part of the Family of God.
“To unite having and being is to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself.”
This is another concept I have been afraid to embrace. So, I asked Jesus, to please help my understanding and my acceptance.” I have developed a certain comfort level with thinking of myself as living in God and being part of God, but I have trouble making that leap to being God. Here, I am told that I am to unite having and being because that is to unite my will with His.
I understand and accept that I must do this, that I must unite my will with God’s Will. It is essential that I give up this separate will I made for myself and accept that it was an awesome, if somewhat screwy, experiment, and now it is time for it to end. I can only have one will, and that is the same Will God has.
My problem is that I have never really understood how having and being are the same, and certainly not in this case.
But now, I have been brought to a new understanding of having and being as the same. I have the same will as God, and so I have the same being as God. I am the same as God. That is saying that having and being is the same thing. Of course, the ‘I’ is not the ego self, but my true Self.
I am also reminded that the only difference between God and His Son is that God is the prime creator in that He created us; we did not create Him. God created me, and I create by continuing this process, but I cannot create God. Other than that, there is no separation or difference between God and me. Could that be true? It must be. He willed me Himself.
“And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but one Will.”
I am far from a perfect understanding of God, but I must have some memory of this buried deeply beneath the layers of confusion that make up the self I think of as Myron. I must have that memory because when I read this line, I cried. My unclouded mind longs for this. I want to remember what it is like to be unburdened by the separate will and to rest in the peace and joy that is our one Will. “I will myself to You, and you Will Yourself to me. How can I not know my Self? How can I not know You, my Father?”
“Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom your understanding is not perfect, and what you really want is therefore lost to you.”
The motivation to give up attack is powerful. I want to know Self, and I want to know God, and I want to know I both have and I am that. I cannot know this if I attack any part of God and His Kingdom. As soon as I attack, I lose my understanding of both God and Self. Could I possibly attack anyone if I knew they were part of my holy Self? Could I attack myself if I knew I was part of God? I see how attack increases my confusion about my identity.
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