ACIM Chapter 8. VIII. The Body as Means or End, 6,7

ACIM Chapter 8. VIII. The Body as Means or End, 6,7

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 6

6 Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same situation, does not bother to analyze it at all. If data are meaningless there is no point in analyzing them. The function of truth is to collect information that is true. Any way you handle error results in nothing. The more complicated the results become the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which premises give rise in order to judge them truly.

I am thinking about my son, who has experienced sickness and injury in the past. When he was very sick, and we didn’t know why, I was terrified that I would lose him. I pushed him into seeing one doctor after another, trying to find the cause and so find a solution. My fear drove my thoughts and my actions. My fear kept me from recognizing the nothingness of the sickness.

Eventually, I desired peace more than I desired anything else.

So, of course, that is what I received. In the end, the doctors never discovered a cause or a solution, but his body recovered anyway. The Holy Spirit didn’t need to take X-rays or MRIs. It didn’t need to do anything with the body because the body was not the cause, so the body could not be the solution.

“The function of truth is to collect information that is true.”

So, in the end, the Holy Spirit showed me the truth that sickness is an illusion and is not the Will of God. Therefore, it cannot exist. It collected the truth for me and showed it to me.

Only the mind can be sick, and only the mind can be healed. When my mind was ready to accept healing, my son’s body was healed. This is not really surprising when it is remembered that there is only one of us and that the idea of the body is in the one mind. It is not necessary that I accept healing once and for all to experience a miraculous healing of the body, mine, or someone else’s. It is only required that I have a moment of pure clarity, a wholehearted desire, and in that holy instant, the miracle occurs.

My son also had a back injury that had not healed, even with surgery.

He suffered so much, and the ego mind went all over the place with this. I felt guilty because I had not been able to do anything about this. His pain triggered the belief in pain in my mind, and I suffered with him. When I was away from him, I got on with life. I didn’t think about him and his pain, and then I felt guilty for that. I had so much guilt and fear about his suffering that I projected it onto him. Then I resented him for this and made the whole thing his fault, which, of course, only increased the guilt.

As we have been learning in this section, sickness is caused by the belief that the body is for attack and the belief that I am the body. Everything that the ego says about this situation is that I am guilty. Guilt is an attack. I am using the body for the purpose of attack when I choose to believe in guilt. We are also learning that a sick body does not make any sense. Jesus says this:

Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego’s interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premises sickness is inconceivable.

Here is what I learned from this experience with my son.

• Guilt is an attack, whether it is directed inward or outward.
• I am innocent, and so is everyone else.
• Sickness (pain, suffering, death), when seen rightly, is inconceivable.
• If I perceive sickness, it is because I have mistaken myself for a body that is for attack.
• Healing is of the mind.

I notice my mind looking for solutions outside itself, and I notice when I believe the guilt thoughts. I notice the desire to project (attack), and I realize my mind is sick and needs to be healed. So, I ask for healing and accept the Atonement to the degree I am able. I am learning that healing that is requested is given. I am learning to disregard appearances and see with Christ Vision the answer that is before me, not the illusory effects of mistaken thoughts.

Most importantly, I am learning to forgive myself for not doing this perfectly.

My mind is being healed, and the more this happens, the more I desire this healing above all else. The world is an accurate projection of the beliefs in my mind. So whatever I see in the world (including a sick son) is healed within my mind because that is where they originated. It is being reinforced in my mind that I need do nothing. I let go of the guilt that drives the fear that provokes the need to attack, and all that is left is peace.

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 7

7 A learning device is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel. You do not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego’s confusion, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking guidance of a teacher who does not know the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being.

Oh my! I never thought of sickness and the ego like this before. When my body is sick, it is like I ask the body how I feel. The body can’t tell me how I feel because it is a simple learning device. It is like asking my pencil what I feel like writing or asking my car where I feel like driving. I used to say things like, “I check in with my body to see what it needs.” That’s just funny, really. This is just more ego confusion. Whatever my body “tells” me is just a message from me to me through this device I call my body. Why not just skip the middleman?

Sickness is not something that just happens to the body.

Nor does the body doesn’t decide if it is sick or not. Sickness is a deliberate choice to use the body as a defense against God. I make the choice to use the body as a symbol of my defense against God. I choose sickness and use the body to express that sickness. Then I pretend to myself that it just happened to me, and I use it to convince myself that I am weak, fragile and the furthest thing from the divine being the Course talks about.

So, this morning, I woke up feeling stiff and achy. What could be the cause? I worked extra hard both during the week and on the weekend, and I haven’t been taking my body for its daily walks with the regularity it needs. This is the way I used to interpret the sensations in the body. Now, I am willing to withdraw my projections and own my decision to pretend I am a victim of my work schedule and time constraints.

I don’t need to project onto this body the fears, guilt, and resentments of life in my story. I can stop asking the ego, which doesn’t know anything, what is going on. And I can stop using the body to defend against God and give my willingness to know what I am. I am not forced by circumstances into any amount of work or bound by the laws of the world in any way. It is I who decided on the circumstances and made the laws of the world, so how could I be a victim of the world?

As Jesus says, the ego has no knowledge, so the ego has no being.

This morning, at least, I am sane enough to stop taking advice from imaginary sources and to ask Reality how I feel. I do this as I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me how I feel, to decide for me what I think about this, to decide for me what I am to do, to say, and where I am to go.

I am not surrendering anything of value when I do this because the ego is nothing, and nothing is not valuable. Instead, I can let go of any remaining resistance to total surrender because I remember now that this is my true will. Giving up the ego as my advisor is not giving anything up; I am embracing what I really am.

Jesus, this all seems so clear and even self-evident as I sit here with you. Please help me to remember it as the day goes on and the distractions of life attract my attention. Please help me to remember what I am when the ego mind vies for my attention. When I project onto the body and experience discomfort, remind me that this comes not from the world, but from the confused mind. Help me remember that the body is not me but only a useful tool. Help me remember that I don’t need or want to defend against my loving Father, and I don’t want to use sickness to hide from my holy Self. Thank you.

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