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8 The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept unequivocally that healing is necessary. What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can error be corrected by any device that can be seen physically. As long as you believe in what your physical sight tells you, your attempts at correction will be misdirected. The real vision is obscured, because you cannot endure to see your own defiled altar. But since the altar has been defiled, your state becomes doubly dangerous unless it is perceived.
I am still reading this paragraph. Yesterday my attention was drawn to the idea that we are afraid of healing because we don’t really accept that healing is necessary. I looked at the fear of God as the source of this confusion. I recognized that I spent many years being afraid to look at my defiled altar because I was afraid to see what I had done, and afraid I would be condemned for my error. Thank God, (quite literally) that I am undoing that belief as I consistently look at the mistaken beliefs with a willingness to see differently.
And yesterday I thought about how the healing actually takes place. I accept the Atonement and my mind is healed, then I project this healed vision on my world. Now that I have accepted that healing is necessary, I want to look more closely at the actual healing. Just as I was once confused about how the healing translated in the world, I was also confused about asking for healing and asking for healing of others.
When I use the word healing it covers anything that proceeds from a wrong-minded thought, anything that is born of a separation thought. This applies equally to all thought errors whatever form they might take. I don’t see any difference in lack of physical health or lack of money or lack of friendship or a strained relationship. Guilt over past behaviors, fear of heights, expressions of unworthiness, grievances and projections, blame, anger and indifference, all are the same error. And all of them are a call for healing.
I am mostly using physical healings as examples right now because this is what Spirit is helping me with at this time. He seems to want me to fully accept the unreality of the body and so this is what He is showing me in many ways. This is why He offered me the opportunity to let go of sleep aids and pain pills. He wants me to observe that I can use magic solutions to deal with these problems or I can use His power to do the same thing. In accepting his solution I am learning that the pills are as illusional as the body.
I noticed that using the pills pulled me deeper into the dream. Using them kept me focused on the body, when to take them, how often, how I felt when I did and didn’t use these magical solutions. It began to seem like the world revolved around my body and its need for sleep and freedom from pain. Everything I did was scheduled around my need for sleep and how it would affect the pain in my body.
I have followed Holy Spirit’s guidance and am learning to see pain differently and now am learning to see sleep differently. I feel like a person who has suddenly been released from a life sentence. I don’t make social plans based on how it will interfere with my sleep. I don’t schedule customer visits so that I can be sure I have had the “right” amount of sleep. I don’t allow for extra time in my schedule to take frequent breaks to relieve the stiffness and pain. I’m free! Woohoo!
The most important thing that happened, though, is that when I followed Spirit’s guidance, I stopped digging the hole any deeper. That is, I stopped going deeper into the illusion and, instead, began breaking its hold on me. Holy Spirit helped me to understand that nothing I could see would cure me. Ambien helps me sleep only because I decided it would. As I was making the transition, I would suddenly decide I really do need the Ambien and there were a few times when I would take one and nothing would happen. “Very funny, Holy Spirit. But I got your point.”
The timing on this was impeccable though. By the time this began to happen to me, I noticed that my mind had been healed enough that there was no longer any fear about the pill not working. I just shrugged my shoulders and assumed I either didn’t need the pill or didn’t need the sleep. And so he taught me that both were true. But what I was learning at the same time is that I didn’t need the pill or the sleep because the body is not the cause of the problem and so the problem is not solved through the body.
The body is not creative. It cannot create sleep disorders. This situation occurred in the mind and was then projected onto the body (which itself is a projection from mind.) Obviously, the solution would have to begin in the mind. As the mind is healed, the projection changes as well. Always it is the mind that is healed. The body and everything about the body is a projection that comes either from a healed mind, or a sick mind.
In the past when I was sick, I would ask that the body be healed. Then after I started studying the Course, I realized that this was not right, but I didn’t really understand why because my mind was not clear yet. I didn’t think that I am meant to suffer, but had enough understanding to know that repairing body is not the aim of healing. I just could not reconcile the two thoughts, and so I was confused. I didn’t know how to pray.
Eventually I began to fully embrace the metaphysics of the Course and to accept that I am not the body, and that the body is as much illusion as everything else in form. When I realized that, I understood prayer for healing better. I began to realize that the body was receiving the projections of my beliefs, so it was my beliefs that needed to be healed. It was only one small step from there to realize that when the mind is healed it can only project a healed body. Ah, now I see that I am not meant to suffer, and I see how it works. I am so grateful.
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