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Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 1. 2-6-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 1
1 Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient, recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient. Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, believing healing is the way to death? When this is so, a sudden healing might precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient might even try to destroy himself. Having nothing to live for, he may ask for death. Healing must wait, for his protection.

Journal
The first thing we learn from this paragraph is that healing is always certain. Then it reminds us of what healing is. “Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient.”  If I see someone as sick, I ask what is it in me that reflects this error. I remember Dr. Hew Lin who healed mental patients by reading their charts and healing in his mind what he saw there.

Then Jesus answers the question that most of us have struggled with. If I, as a teacher of God, have accepted the Atonement for myself on behalf of my brother, why is he still sick? The answer is that it might be worse for the patient to be healed than to remain sick. Jesus talks about the patient using sickness as a way of life and if that way is lost to him, he might fall into an intense depression and a sense of loss. It could lead him to death because he thinks he has nothing to live for.

That seems hard to believe so I asked for an example and I remembered someone who had lung cancer. This was the last of several debilitating diseases she had suffered in her life. Sickness was a way of life for her. She had a sincere religious belief that she suffered for God. She offered all her suffering to Him. She thought that was what God wanted of her and so she gave him that.

I wonder how she would have reacted if all sickness had suddenly been taken from her. Probably at first she would have called it a miracle and been happy. But, Jesus says that guilt is the cause of sickness and if someone was healed but did not feel forgiven, would that produce fear in her mind? And if that person truly believed in sacrifice as a way of life, what would she have to live for without anything to sacrifice? I suppose I could see that fear of healing would keep healing at bay.

I don’t think that this kind of thinking is conscious. We don’t tell ourselves that we are so guilty that we must be punished with pain and sickness. We might tell ourselves that our pain and suffering has a purpose and that God loves us for it. We might tell ourselves that punishing ourselves will abate God’s wrath. I am sure we don’t tell ourselves that without sickness we have nothing to live for, but all of this is occurring. We but do this to ourselves is true in every situation.

I thought of another person who was dying from COPD. She had smoked all her life and felt guilty for it. She believed that she was getting what she deserved. She thought she wanted to be healed and she manifested a way for this to happen. And yet, she seemed at every turn to refuse the gift of health until she died anyway. It looked to me like she insisted on dying. It was a strange thing to watch. Reading this section of the Course helped me to understand. If you don’t think you deserve to live, then living becomes a threat.

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