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Study of Text, Chapter 9, V. The Unhealed Healer, P 7. 2-27-15

Chapter 9, V. The Unhealed Healer P 7
7 Both forms of the ego’s approach, then, must arrive at an impasse; the characteristic “impossible situation” to which the ego always leads. It may help someone to point out where he is heading, but the point is lost unless he is also helped to change his direction. The unhealed healer cannot do this for him, since he cannot do it for himself. The only meaningful contribution the healer can make is to present an example of one whose direction has been changed for him, and who no longer believes in nightmares of any kind. The light in his mind will therefore answer the questioner, who must decide with God that there is light because he sees it. And by his acknowledgement the healer knows it is there. That is how perception ultimately is translated into knowledge. The miracle worker begins by perceiving light, and translates his perception into sureness by continually extending it and accepting its acknowledgement. Its effects assure him it is there.

Jesus makes it very simple and easy to understand. The healer heals by being healed. A true healer presents an example of one who does not believe in nightmares of any kind, and the light in his mind is perceived by the mind of the one who needs healing. Then he believes in the light because he sees it. The healer is further enlightened as his light is acknowledged and this translates his perception into sureness.

Here is how this feels to me in my own life. I am learning that nightmares are never true no matter how real they may appear to be in the world. Every time I believe in one, but remain open to healing, I discover that the dream is an illusion and I become more certain that all nightmares are just illusions.

When I teach or counsel I am doing so from the highest part of my self that I can access. That part of my mind can see the nightmare my student is having for what it is. I know the truth for the student and am not confused by her story. This certainty in my mind is a light that, on some level, can be perceived by the student. I translate it into words and we talk, but it is the certainty that heals.

I have had times when my mind would be all fogged in because I had been listening to ego. My personal self would be confused and unhappy. I would get a call from a student asking for help seeing a problem differently, and as I allowed the little self to step back and the Holy Spirit to move forward in my mind, I was perfectly clear and perfectly certain as my student and I spoke.

That never ceases to amaze me. It also has helped me to understand that the ego confusion is just a temporary condition and that the truth remains in my mind even when I am listening to the wrong voice. It is harder now for me to take the ego as seriously as before, because I have had proof that the truth is there all the time even when I am not noticing it. I have proof that my mind is part of God’s Mind all the time. As I shine that light for my student, I see it reflected back to me and this translates my perception into sureness.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9,V The Unhealed Healer, P 6. 2-26-15

V. The Unhealed Healer P 6
6 What, then, should happen? When God said, “Let there be light,” there was light. Can you find light by analyzing darkness, as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and looking for a distant light to remove it, while emphasizing the distance? Healing is not mysterious. Nothing will change unless it is understood, since light is understanding. A “miserable sinner” cannot be healed without magic, nor can an “unimportant mind” esteem itself without magic.

Journal
“Can you find light by analyzing darkness…” is the key idea I am taking from this paragraph. I am not going to find the answer in the story, and I am not going to understand what needs to be done by looking at the story. In fact, dwelling on the story is going to keep me in darkness and confuse me further.

Whether working with myself or with someone else, I try to move out of the story as quickly as possible. The story, what seems to be happening in my life, can help me see that I need correction, but it is not the story that needs to be corrected; it is a belief in my mind that needs correction. Further analysis of the story would help only if I were going to try to make myself feel better by reordering my story. This is trying to heal through magical means and it has never worked and never will.

What does help is to realize that the story is just a symbol of a thought in my mind that has been projected outward and seen as if it is real. If I don’t immediately recognize the symbolism, it can help to look at how the situation makes me feel. For instance, if I feel like life is not fair, or that I was unfairly treated, then I know that I believe I am a victim of the world I see.

This can’t be true, so I ask the Holy Spirit to remove that thought from my mind so that I can see the truth that lies just behind it. When I ask for healing it really is like a light came on. I see what was before obscured by the dark thoughts in my mind. I do this each time I notice that my story triggers fear or guilt in my mind.

Practice has taught me that I could have peace instead of this, and I have learned to desire peace more than I desire the story of victimhood. As I remain vigilant and as I consistently choose peace, there is transfer of learning. I begin to automatically choose peace, and there is not that uncomfortable period of suffering while I decide I want my mind to be healed.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9,V. the Unhealed Healer, P 4. 2-25-15

V. The Unhealed Healer P 4
4 Some newer forms of the ego’s plan are as unhelpful as the older ones, because form does not matter and the content has not changed. In one of the newer forms, for example, a psychotherapist may interpret the ego’s symbols in a nightmare, and then use them to prove that the nightmare is real. Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the importance of the dreamer. This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were also identified as unreal. Yet if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind’s corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied. This is a contradiction even in the ego’s terms, and one which it usually notes even in its confusion.
5 If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the mind, how can this build ego strength? Such evident inconsistencies account for why no one has really explained what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing really does. Nothing real has happened to the unhealed healer, and he must learn from his own teaching. His ego will always seek to get something from the situation. The unhealed healer therefore does not know how to give, and consequently cannot share. He cannot correct because he is not working correctively. He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is real, although he does not know it himself.

Journal
I think the last sentence sums up both paragraphs. “He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is real, although he does not know it himself.” This is the unhealed healer. He is confused about what is real and what isn’t. He looks at the story for the truth, for clues to undo what he has made real. Making it real is how you keep it, not undo it.

The story is just form and not content, and changing the form will not really change anything. Changing the form is what we do all the time as we try to make the world change to suit us, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it is the content that must be changed, and the content is not found in the form, though the form can lead to the content if one knows to look for it.

The unhealed healer goes into the relationship expecting to get something from it. He wants to be the one who knows, the one who succeeds. He thinks he needs the patient to respond as proof that he has done his job. He may want prestige and money. But giving to get is not really giving. The unhealed healer isn’t sharing and so there is no union and therefore no true relationship. It is in union and relationship that we are healed, because it is separation that is the sickness.

The psychoanalyst or theologian, or me or you, will not do anything of value if our own mind is not healed. No amount of digging around in the story is going to undo the story if the therapist is confused about the true nature of the patient, and is confused about the nature of healing and his part in it.

There are ways to help, though. When someone comes to me for counseling, I begin the session asking the Holy Spirit to work through me for this one. I listen to the story and then guide them out of the story to the true content, to the mind that is confused. I offer them an opportunity to see differently through the Holy Spirit in their mind.

If I share my own story of darkness it is only to share that I got out of it, and to share how I did that. I don’t teach that the darkness is real because I don’t believe it is real. Rather, I teach that what is not real cannot keep us bound. I am not concerned about the outcome because I am not asking them for anything. We are simply joining, forming a union with the two of us and the Holy Spirit. The union itself is healing for us both. That is real healing, I think, when the healer is healed along with the patient.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, V. The Unhealed Healer, P 3. 2-24-15

V. The Unhealed Healer P 3
3 There is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only to teach that they are not real, and that anything they contain is meaningless. The unhealed healer cannot do this because he does not believe it. All unhealed healers follow the ego’s plan for forgiveness in one form or another. If they are theologians they are likely to condemn themselves, teach condemnation and advocate a fearful solution. Projecting condemnation onto God, they make Him appear retaliative, and fear His retribution. What they have done is merely to identify with the ego, and by perceiving what it does, condemn themselves because of this confusion. It is understandable that there have been revolts against this concept, but to revolt against it is still to believe in it.

Journal
“There is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only to teach that they are not real, and that anything they contain is meaningless.”

This is what I do with my stories. I feel upset about something, and I ask for clarity. I have been upset about some things happening at work and so I look at my feelings, and my thoughts about what is happening. From there I might remember the first time I felt like this, and see the apparent cause of my current feelings. But what I know is that none of it is real and all of it is meaningless, both what is happening now and what happened in the past. When I feel otherwise, I ask that my mind be healed of that belief.

This is very different than how I felt about it and handled problems in the past. Before I learned differently through the study and practice of the Course, I would look for the person who was to blame, someone on whom I could project all my bad feelings. I would look for someone that I could see as guilty, or at least someone who could share the blame.

I would look at the current players and I would look at people from my past, people I could blame for my present behavior. All the time I was seeing guilty parties everywhere I looked, I was making it all very real, and so impossible to forgive. This is the way to keep a problem, and to exasperate the problem so it becomes even bigger in the mind. It certainly doesn’t lead to healing.

When I am in the middle of a nightmare experience, the ego mind believes in the reality of the situation and wants to control it. But I don’t know what anything is for and so I resist that urge as much as I can. I trust that my story is taking me to the situations most helpful for the healing of my mind, in spite of the ego’s insistence that I need to do something within the story.

When I identify with guilt, I am identifying with ego. I am identified with myself as ego. The ego is going to be wrong, but I am not the ego. However, I will lose sight of that if I indulge in guilt, directed at another or at myself. The whole battle is a farce because it is between what is real and what is not real. As I allow my thoughts to be corrected, this is what I begin to understand. I am not the ego, and neither is anyone else. I don’t want to teach this lie, and so I am vigilant for signs that I am identifying with the unreal.

The only way to return my mind to the Kingdom is to see that I have been wrong about both myself, and my brother, and to change my mind about what I want. In order to do that I must take my eyes off of the fear and guilt and bring my focus to the truth. I am as God created me. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. My ego can be wrong, but I am incapable of sin.

I am one with my brothers, all of them, and the only way to know this is to be inclusive in this union. As I learn that I yearn for union, and as I learn that I want to be inclusive, I heal the mind, not just mine, but the entire sleeping mind. To leave anyone outside of forgiveness is to teach separation, and therefore to learn it. My brothers are as incapable of sin as am I. This is the only thing I want to teach and therefore to learn. I want to be a healed healer, and so be a true healer.

The other thing that caught my attention in this paragraph is that while many religions teach guilt and fear, and while that is not healing, neither is it healing for me to rebel against it. To be in revolt against the people who do this and to revolt against the religions that teach falsely, is to single out and make separate. It is to fracture the very union that I desire.

I may not listen to the sermon or attend the church, but I no longer condemn, because I am no longer at war with them. Everyone here is here because they are confused about what they are. Forgiveness heals, and forgiveness is the recognition that nothing has been accomplished in an illusion and so no one is guilty in the illusion. I don’t feel threatened by other belief systems. I know that they all lead to salvation eventually.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, V. The Unhealed Healer, P 2. 2-23-15

V. The Unhealed Healer P 2
2 I have repeatedly said that beliefs of the ego cannot be shared, and this is why they are unreal. How, then, can “uncovering” them make them real? Every healer who searches fantasies for truth must be unhealed, because he does not know where to look for truth, and therefore does not have the answer to the problem of healing.

Journal
All my beliefs in guilt, fear, and suffering are illusions. None of these are in God so they do not exist except in my imagination. The stories that represent these beliefs are no more real than the beliefs. So what is the point of digging around in the story to find the “cause” of my unhappiness?

A good therapist can help me do this, but there would be no point. Finding the origin of the story within the story is a monumental waste of time. Only if my unhappiness was the result of the story would that would be the solution. What I know is that the story is the result of the thought, not the other way around, therefore, the solution is to accept correction for the thought. From a healed mind, comes a healed world.

I cannot find the truth in my stories. They are the effect of the unhealed mind for the most part, and are always the out-picturing of thoughts in the mind. If the picture is one of chaos, then it is not the story that caused the chaos, but the thoughts that are represented in the image. It is a simple thing to know if my mind has been making images based on beliefs that are not true. Am I at peace? If not, then I need to accept the Atonement and allow the mind to be healed.

“My thoughts are images I have made.”

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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