Lesson 148

My mind holds only what I think with God.

“If I defend myself I am attacked.”

“Sickness is a defense against the truth.”

Review

Reading my journal on this lesson, I see that I have evolved in my understanding and response to sickness. I am going to use a couple of these entries because I think they are helpful. But first, here is what I am doing now. Sickness is a result of the thoughts we believe. It can take form differently, but the content, the sick belief is always the same. The form might be a special relationship that needs to be transformed or a belief in loss or lack. It might take the form of victimhood or its close cousin the belief of being unfairly treated. Whatever the form, it is a defense against God.

I had an inflamed nerve in my foot. What I did was to go to the doctor to be sure about the foot. It felt like it might have a broken bone or something. But right away, I started asking the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking about this body. I am obviously using it to defend against God in some way and this is not what I want. After a couple of weeks, the foot seems to be healed.

It would have healed whether I went to the doctor or not and whether I did the work with Holy Spirit or not. But every time I walked on it and felt the pain I had a chance to remember that I give this body to the Holy Spirit for His use and that I want my mind purified so that He can use me in whatever way would be beneficial to the Sonship. That is what matters.

Here is something that happened a few years ago.

I have been thinking a lot about sickness. I accept that sickness is a defense against the truth because I have noticed that when I get too close to the truth, my unconscious response can be sickness. It can be a regular body response, and also it is often an emotional response such as sadness, fear, and anxiety.

I also know that sickness is a defense against the truth because when I am in pain my world revolves around that pain. I am intently focused on the pain and it is as if nothing else exists. I am only interested in ways to relieve the pain. This, of course, places me firmly in the body where I think God cannot reach me. It is not until the pain is gone that I am able to look at what it might signify.

But lately, I notice that when I am sick, while I do respond as if I am a body and getting well is my goal, I also notice that it is not my only goal. All the time that I am taking medicine, resting, seeing a doctor, or whatever I feel I need to do to relieve myself of the pain, I am also asking the Holy Spirit how I can use this to undo the ego. The first time I did this, I was very excited because I recognized that the only true healing takes place in the mind where the sickness is. Actually, I still feel excited every time I remember the truth, even if I am not willing to give it my full attention.

Me: Holy Spirit, I feel guilty when I have to take medicine, which is nearly every time I get sick. I do it anyway, but I know that guilt is not helpful. Would you talk to me about this?

Holy Spirit: Myron, you are, of course, right about guilt not being helpful. No matter what seems to be in your life it is the result of looking in to find an answer and then looking out to see what that answer is. And the answer you see when you look out shows you who you asked. If you look out and see sickness you did not ask Me for an answer.

This is the value of being aware that everything is in your life by your invitation. Now that you are no longer wasting time blaming someone or something else for what is happening to you, you can recognize that you are the author of the dream, and you can begin to understand that the dream itself will inform you of your teacher. If the dream is not one of love and peace, then simply choose the other teacher.

Myron, allow me to remind you that it doesn’t matter if you use magic to heal the body. The body is no more real than medicine is. The magic could not work had you not given it permission to do so. One day you will not need that intermediate step. You will simply give yourself permission to heal without magic being part of it. One day you will be free of guilt and will no longer experience illness.

Would you feel guilty because you are not in a different place on your path? You are exactly where you need to be at this moment. You need what you are learning this day. If you notice your guilt and notice that what you are experiencing is a result of your thoughts and your choice of teachers, then you are doing what you need to do right now. I am grateful to you for your decision to be vigilant. I do not ask you to do more than this. Your vigilance will bring you to the next place in your journey.

And this one more recently is about defending against attack from others, or rather not defending against perceived attack.

One New Year’s day I spent time with my family. Two things happened that were part of my lesson for the day. I was watching my older daughter cooking and she was trying to get cornbread out of the muffin pan and was having trouble. I knew a better way to do it and told her to let me do it for her. She just said, “Mom.”

In that one expressive word she was saying “let me do it myself” and “really, I’m 48 years old. I think I can do this without help.” Haha. I backed off remembering how often I tried to do things for my kids when it would have been better to let them learn from their efforts. Probably there was a time when I would have been hurt or embarrassed by her reaction, but this time I just smiled. I did not feel any desire to defend myself. A lot has changed for me over the last few years.

On the other hand, my son said something that felt unkind and disrespectful and I worried over that for most of the day, turning it over in my mind and wondering what it meant about our relationship. Finally, I released it to the Holy Spirit to be reinterpreted for me. Probably it didn’t mean anything, just his weird sense of humor.

But no matter what it meant it was a problem for me only if I defended myself from it. When I do that, it feels frightening because there is really nothing to defend against and no way to defend myself against nothing that feels like something. In defending myself, even just in my mind, I was attacking my peace. In retrospect I realize that I am never upset for the reason I think and so it was doubly ridiculous for me to defend myself. I am not completely free of the belief I need to defend myself but I am free of the belief that it is a good idea. (I almost never do this anymore and if I fall for it I only do so briefly.)

Another useless form of defense is sickness. It is a deliberate attempt at self-deception. When I am sick it is because I want to be. I use it to hide from the truth of what I am. If I am sick, my first question to myself is why did I do this? The answer is always the same; I did this so that I could go on pretending that I don’t know who I am. That is how I heal myself and the healing proceeds according to my desire to lay my defenses aside and accept the truth.