Commentary on ACIM Lesson 136

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

Sickness is a defense against the truth.

 

 

My surrendering to God the complete control of 'my life' is the only Way there IS for me to 'really know my true self'.  In yesterday's lesson, this came in clear....to do nothing 'of myself'.  Either ask, or simply wait for instructions.  In any case, don't act without 'a divine review, and approval'.  Hey, if Jesus could do it, why can't I/we? Remember, that's what he said.  "Of myself, I do nothing." 

 

Yesterday's lesson was (to me) both challenging, AND thrilling.  So is today's, which flips on it's head the way the world teaches me to look at 'illness/sickness'.   This reversal does not mean to be 'uncompassionate' toward someone 'ill'.  It means we/I have the means to heal them, if we/I will see them as who they actually are.  This is what offering a blessing really means....to see another as they really are, that they may see themselves in that way too.  This is exactly the gift that the shamanic medical intuitive I went to see a week ago gave me.... In time/space, this may 'take time', as most of us are very habituated to doubting miracles.  In the 'Body Electronics' practice of 'point holding' though (where I have seen this happen) the wisdom teaching is that 'unblocked healing is instantaneous'.  And this correlates exactly with the Biblical testimony of the instantaneous healings of Jesus.  

 

We in this circle have the opportunity to bless and empower each other, even though we do not even know who the others in the circle are.  This is done simply by visualizing being an essential part of a sacred circle while we are reading this Commentary.  Just release a blessing of love from your heart to each of us in it, and see that blessing reaching all of us instantaneously also.  Each of us in this circle are in training to be true servants of Love.  We are in training to 'have nothing that does not come from God' (no matter what we may think we are thinking).  I am clear our individual training is benefited by such a group practice.  So I invite you blessing upon yourself, myself, and all of us each day. 

 

Also, with practice, the speed of the download ( receiving instructions from Source) is also nearly instantaneous.  It is like there is a new 'you'.  Because, as the new program retrains the old one, there is.  O happy day.   

 

Namaste, 

 

David

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First person edited version

 

Lesson 136

Sickness is a defense against the truth.

I can heal no one (or myself)l unless I understand what purpose sickness seems to exist for and to serve. For then I understand as well that its purpose has no meaning. Sickness then (being seen as causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind) cannot be (real) at all. When I actually see this, my healing is automatic. My healing dispels this particular meaningless illusion by the same approach by which it carries all illusions to truth, and it then merely leaves them there, to disappear.

My 'sickness' (or anyone else's) is not an accident. It, like all egoic defenses, is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to 1. hide reality, 2. attack it, 3. change it, 4. render it inept, 5. distort it, 6. twist it, or 7. reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all these defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. (The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself).

Further, my defenses are not 'unintentional', nor are they made 'without awareness'. They are secret magic wands I wave whenever truth appears to threaten what I would wish to believe. They seem to be unconscious only because of the rapidity with which I choose to use them. In that second (or even less) in which the choice is being made, I recognize exactly what I 'would attempt to do', and then proceed to think that 'it is done'.

Who but my ego i-self evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? I know all this cannot be done 'unconsciously'. But afterwards, my 'ego-sabotage plan' requires that I must forget I made it, so it will seem to be external to my own intent; a happening beyond my state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on me, instead of one effected by myself.

It is this quick forgetting of the part I play in making my "reality" that makes defenses seem to be beyond my own control. But what I have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision (which is now doubly shielded by oblivion). My not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as 'my ego desires' are concerned. Mistake not this for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and it is this they do.

Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole that is not there. It is this process that imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole; successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. And yet I have forgotten that they stand but for my own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what IS real.

As tough as it is for me to accept at times, sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to me (quite unsought, which makes me weak and brings me suffering). It is a choice I make, a plan I lay, when for an instant truth arises in my own deluded mind, and all my world appears to totter and prepares to fall. Now am I 'sick', that truth may go away and threaten my establishments no more.

How do I think that sickness can succeed in shielding me from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from me, and so I must be separate from the truth. I suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain am I made one with it. Thus is my "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that I might be something beyond this little pile of is dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make me suffer, twist my limbs and stop my heart, commanding me to die and cease to be.

Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks I live, but cannot overcome my choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.

Such is my planning for my own defense. And I believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by my illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which my defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?

God knows not of my plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which I thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. I can but choose to think I die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

Such IS the simple truth.  It does not make appeal to might nor triumph.  It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile my attempts to plan defenses that would alter it. Truth merely wants to give me happiness, for such its purpose is.  Perhaps it sighs a little when I throw away its gifts, and yet it knows, with perfect certainty, that what God wills for me must be (eventually) received.

It is this fact that demonstrates that time is an illusion. For time lets me think what God has given me is not the truth right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defense I made against the truth. Yet what He wills is here, and I remain as God created me.

Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly. It is found at any time; today, whenever I will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.

This IS my aim today. And I will give a quarter of an hour twice today to  ask the truth to come to me and set me free. And truth will come, for it has never been apart from me. It merely waits for just this invitation which I give today. I introduce my practice times with a healing prayer, to help me rise above defensiveness, and let truth be as it has always been:

Sickness is a defense against the truth. 
I will accept the truth of what I am, 
and let my mind be wholly healed today.

Healing will flash across my open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from my dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in my mind. And, it will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

NOW is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And I will recognize I practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. If I have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

Perhaps I do not realize that this removes the limits I had placed upon the body by the purposes I gave to it. As these limits are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws I made it serve before. I need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If I let my mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, I have again misplaced myself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the my mind is again sick.

Should this occur I will give instant remedy by not allowing my defensiveness to hurt me any longer. I will not be confused about what must be healed, but will tell myself:

I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick.