Commentary on ACIM Lesson 137

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

When I am healed I am not healed alone.

 

 

Out of the lesson practice, my focus today was 'watching my mind' create its assessments and judgements of other people.  Somehow a grace was present many times (as I moved through several crowds and other situations) which allowed me to see the rapidity spoken of in yesterday's lesson.  And I saw it was true (although the judging thought was extremely quick to appear) that there was a nano-second of pure perception before the 'judgment/assessment/false knowing' arose, where my seeing was free of my habituated response.  

 

As I practiced choosing to remove my ego's knowing, the world shifted each time, in that instant. Where it shifted to was 'not knowing' who the other was.   This was, by the way, the exact instruction my teacher Prasad had given me many years ago. Moving through the day with this practice opened a beautiful space for life to just be accepted (as distinct from 'resisted').  

 

At a plant nursery, I encountered some people in the fruit tree area who thought I worked there....  'No, oh well, you look like you belonged', one commented.  I said in response, 'Yes, I feel like I do'.   Then we talked 'like we knew each other'.  That was what was present....  an effortless 'friendliness' of life.   

 

It comes to me that this 'friendliness of life' is like a 'sweet nectar of grace' whose presence confirms the love of God active in my life, and to be so easily available (as if by magic) by the simple practice of 'watching the mind and deleting its habitual judgments of EVERYTHING' is an investment of spiritual discipline worth the effort.  I hope my suggestion of this inspires more than just your interest.....  :-)

 

Namaste, 

 

David

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First Person Edited Version

Lesson 137

When I am healed I am not healed alone.

This idea remains THE central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world's ideas (which dwell on sickness and on separate states). Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. Sickness becomes a door within me that closes on my separate self, and keeps me isolated and alone.

Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep myself apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real, and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh, which it can not surmount.

The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them. It is impossible that anyone, including myself, be healed alone. In sickness must I be apart and separate. But healing is my own decision/choice to be one again, and to accept my Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does my Self appear to be dismembered, and without the unity that gives It life. But healing is accomplished as I see the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God's Son. 

Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that truth is true. The separation sickness would impose on me has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

Yet I shall not think healing is unworthy of my function here. For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality that can be seen and justified and fully understood.

Just as forgiveness shines away all sin and the real world will occupy the place of what I made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which I hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear (in spite of all the laws that hold it cannot but be real) then questions have been answered. And those 'laws' can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.

My healing is my freedom. For it demonstrates that dreams do not prevail against the truth. And, my healing is shared. By this attribute, it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites. My healing is my strength. For by its gentle hand is weakness overcome, and minds that were walled off within a body free become to join with other minds also so free, to be forever strong.

Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter, are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges me to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be mine; how little practice I need undertake to let His laws replace the ones I made to hold myself a prisoner to death. His life becomes my own, as I extend the little help He asks in freeing me from everything that ever caused me pain.

And as I let myself be healed, I see all those around me, or who cross my mind, or whom I touch or those who seem to have no contact with me, healed along with me. Perhaps I will not recognize them all, nor realize how great my offering to all the world, when I let healing come to me. But I am never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift that I receive when I am healed.

Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the instant I am healed, and all the grace of healing it is given me to give. What is opposed to God does not exist, and I (who accept this opposition not within my mind) become a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.

Would I not offer shelter to God's Will? I but invite my Self to be at home. And can this invitation be refused? Ask the inevitable to occur, and I will never fail. The other choice is but to ask what cannot be to be, and this can not succeed. Today I ask that only truth will occupy my mind; that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

I will remember, as the hour strikes, my function is to let my mind be healed, that I may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving, to receive a gift like this? Is not a little time a small expense to offer for the gift of everything?

Yet must I be prepared for such a gift. And so I will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which I will conclude today at night as well:

When I am healed I am not healed alone. 
And I would share my healing with the world, 
that sickness may be banished from the mind of 
God's one Son, Who is my only Self.

Let healing Be through me this very day. And as I rest in quiet, let me be prepared to give as I receive, to hold but what I give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now I come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will I let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering my purpose with this thought:

When I am healed I am not healed alone. 
And I would bless my brothers, for I would 
be healed with them, as they are healed with me.