Commentary on ACIM Lesson 140
©2010 Rev. David Seacord
Only salvation can be said to cure.
How much we miss. I am sure everyone of us has this feeling arise at one time or another....the recognition that we have not been present to some of the most beautiful moments of our lives, simply because we were 'in our heads' and 'believing our mind's' version of reality.....
My shoulder and upper arm have been regularly sore at the end of the day (as I move around northern New Mexico completing this contract I am doing) and so I have been taking advantage of the many local natural food stores here that allow massage therapists to offer 'chair massages' at their locations. These quarter hours of body work have been 'lifesavers' for me. (Wait till you read the lesson though...:-) Anyway, today, I was 'behind' in my self-set 'schedule' when I arrived at a store with a therapist. Being 'behind' created me 'not-present' and a bit, well, you know, potentially irritable. Of course, we are always tested when we are 'under stress', right?
The therapist (a man) was talking on the phone outside the store doors, next to a set-up regular-style massage table (I'd never seen this before at a store), while I could see the normal chair-massage chair was inside. He saw me and I gave him sign language that I would like a massage, and he signaled great etc. I went inside to the chair, and waited. And waited. And the therapist stayed outside and just kept talking on the phone.
A lady came up to me wanting a massage, obviously thinking I was the therapist. I let her know I wasn't, and that I was waiting for the therapist to finish his phone call. (He was having a great time, it looked like.... but was oblivious to we customers, it seemed.) The lady and I went back outside to get the therapists attention, and suddenly out of my mouth sprang my ego, saying "OK now, let's wrap it up, customers are waiting...." (Did I really say that? Oh God, hate to say it, but yes, I did. But it wasn't 'mean-spirited' or 'angry', it was actually said with some humor... at least I hoped so...)
The startled therapist quickly got off the phone, telling me that he'd thought I'd gone in 'to do my shopping first'. Then his ego sprang out of his mouth too, saying "But I have a problem with the way you just communicated with me..."
"I'm sorry, I'm just in a hurry. I didn't mean to offend", I said. I could see we were both a little stuck. It was more that a little awkward (I'm sparing you the line by line details as we struggled to re-establish affinity over the top of male egoism and be in the same reality. It took a couple of minutes). Finally he begins working on me....
Oh my God, he is the Best! As I receive his touch, I compliment him, and appreciate him. He softens, and I soften. I apologize completely for being so rude. He forgives me and we laugh. We talk as he works and we discover we have a lot of other things and interests in common. He's a master bodyworker, and he has many suggestions of a spiritual nature to offer me about my sore shoulder (he sort of parallels the lesson you're about to read). We set up another full-length appointment for before I leave to go back to Yuma, where he's to teach me some 'miracle exercises' to heal it. He knows because he had to heal himself the same way....
Then he mentions he's a musician too. I tell him I have a piano in my big truck out in the parking lot (I made my RV out of a big delivery truck especially so I could always have my piano with me...). "Want to see?" I ask. "You bet! I'll take a break for piano any day"...
So there I am, out in my RV with this therapist I almost walked out on, him playing my piano, and me drumming on my dunbek, both of us just groovin'.....
I'm glad I didn't miss it. It could have easily 'gone south' (as they say). Pride could have done us both in, so could have a lot of other attitudes. But 'holy help' was present, and was received, and we were able to re-discover our brotherhood. That is God the merciful in action.
My day went well after that.
Namaste,
David
__________________________
My edited 'First person' version of ACIM lesson 140....
Lesson 140
Only salvation can be said to cure.
"Cure" is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial for me. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make my body "better." When 'the world' tries to heal my mind, it sees no separation from my body, where it thinks my mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. My belief in sickness simply takes another form, and so I now perceive myself as 'well'.
But, I am not healed. I merely had a dream that I was sick, and in the dream I found a magic formula to make me well. Yet I have not awakened from the dream, and so my mind remains exactly as it was before. I have not seen the light that would awaken me and end the dream. What difference to me does the content of a dream make in reality? I either sleep or awaken. There is nothing in between.
The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings to me are different from the dreaming of the world, where I can merely dream I am awake. The dreams forgiveness lets my mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep (so that the dreamer dreams another dream). His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon my mind. They lead me from sleep to gentle waking, so that my dreams are gone. And thus they cure me for all eternity.
Atonement heals me with certainty, and cures all my sicknesses. For my mind now understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream, and is not deceived by whatever the form the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.
Peace be to all who have been cured in God (and not in idle dreams). For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.
This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought that judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is (an unreal illusion), and knows that no illusion can be real.
Let me not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick, so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?
Today I seek to change my mind about the source of sickness, for I seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. I will try today to find the source of healing, which is in my mind because my Father placed it there for me. It is not farther from me than myself. It is as near to me as my own thoughts; so close it is impossible to lose. I need but seek it and it must be found.
I will not be misled today by what appears to me as 'sick'. I will go beyond appearances today and reach the source of my healing, from which nothing is exempt. I will succeed to the extent to which I realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.
So do I lay aside my amulets, my charms and medicines, my chants and bits of magic in whatever form they take. I will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but this can cure. Today I hear a single Voice which speaks to me of truth, where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal, quiet home of God.
I waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to me five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before I go to sleep. My only preparation is to let my interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are all the same. I have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when I can hear my Father speak to me. I hear Him now. I come to Him today.
With nothing in my hands to which I cling, with lifted hearts and listening mind I pray:
Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to me, my Father, that I may be healed.
And I will feel salvation cover me with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb my mind, nor offer proof to me that it is real. This will I learn today. And I will say my prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes, to hear the answer to my prayer be given me as I attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to me. This is the day when separation ends, and I remember Who I really am.
©2010 Rev. David Seacord
Only salvation can be said to cure.
How much we miss. I am sure everyone of us has this feeling arise at one time or another....the recognition that we have not been present to some of the most beautiful moments of our lives, simply because we were 'in our heads' and 'believing our mind's' version of reality.....
My shoulder and upper arm have been regularly sore at the end of the day (as I move around northern New Mexico completing this contract I am doing) and so I have been taking advantage of the many local natural food stores here that allow massage therapists to offer 'chair massages' at their locations. These quarter hours of body work have been 'lifesavers' for me. (Wait till you read the lesson though...:-) Anyway, today, I was 'behind' in my self-set 'schedule' when I arrived at a store with a therapist. Being 'behind' created me 'not-present' and a bit, well, you know, potentially irritable. Of course, we are always tested when we are 'under stress', right?
The therapist (a man) was talking on the phone outside the store doors, next to a set-up regular-style massage table (I'd never seen this before at a store), while I could see the normal chair-massage chair was inside. He saw me and I gave him sign language that I would like a massage, and he signaled great etc. I went inside to the chair, and waited. And waited. And the therapist stayed outside and just kept talking on the phone.
A lady came up to me wanting a massage, obviously thinking I was the therapist. I let her know I wasn't, and that I was waiting for the therapist to finish his phone call. (He was having a great time, it looked like.... but was oblivious to we customers, it seemed.) The lady and I went back outside to get the therapists attention, and suddenly out of my mouth sprang my ego, saying "OK now, let's wrap it up, customers are waiting...." (Did I really say that? Oh God, hate to say it, but yes, I did. But it wasn't 'mean-spirited' or 'angry', it was actually said with some humor... at least I hoped so...)
The startled therapist quickly got off the phone, telling me that he'd thought I'd gone in 'to do my shopping first'. Then his ego sprang out of his mouth too, saying "But I have a problem with the way you just communicated with me..."
"I'm sorry, I'm just in a hurry. I didn't mean to offend", I said. I could see we were both a little stuck. It was more that a little awkward (I'm sparing you the line by line details as we struggled to re-establish affinity over the top of male egoism and be in the same reality. It took a couple of minutes). Finally he begins working on me....
Oh my God, he is the Best! As I receive his touch, I compliment him, and appreciate him. He softens, and I soften. I apologize completely for being so rude. He forgives me and we laugh. We talk as he works and we discover we have a lot of other things and interests in common. He's a master bodyworker, and he has many suggestions of a spiritual nature to offer me about my sore shoulder (he sort of parallels the lesson you're about to read). We set up another full-length appointment for before I leave to go back to Yuma, where he's to teach me some 'miracle exercises' to heal it. He knows because he had to heal himself the same way....
Then he mentions he's a musician too. I tell him I have a piano in my big truck out in the parking lot (I made my RV out of a big delivery truck especially so I could always have my piano with me...). "Want to see?" I ask. "You bet! I'll take a break for piano any day"...
So there I am, out in my RV with this therapist I almost walked out on, him playing my piano, and me drumming on my dunbek, both of us just groovin'.....
I'm glad I didn't miss it. It could have easily 'gone south' (as they say). Pride could have done us both in, so could have a lot of other attitudes. But 'holy help' was present, and was received, and we were able to re-discover our brotherhood. That is God the merciful in action.
My day went well after that.
Namaste,
David
__________________________
My edited 'First person' version of ACIM lesson 140....
Lesson 140
Only salvation can be said to cure.
"Cure" is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial for me. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make my body "better." When 'the world' tries to heal my mind, it sees no separation from my body, where it thinks my mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. My belief in sickness simply takes another form, and so I now perceive myself as 'well'.
But, I am not healed. I merely had a dream that I was sick, and in the dream I found a magic formula to make me well. Yet I have not awakened from the dream, and so my mind remains exactly as it was before. I have not seen the light that would awaken me and end the dream. What difference to me does the content of a dream make in reality? I either sleep or awaken. There is nothing in between.
The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings to me are different from the dreaming of the world, where I can merely dream I am awake. The dreams forgiveness lets my mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep (so that the dreamer dreams another dream). His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon my mind. They lead me from sleep to gentle waking, so that my dreams are gone. And thus they cure me for all eternity.
Atonement heals me with certainty, and cures all my sicknesses. For my mind now understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream, and is not deceived by whatever the form the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.
Peace be to all who have been cured in God (and not in idle dreams). For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.
This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought that judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is (an unreal illusion), and knows that no illusion can be real.
Let me not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick, so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?
Today I seek to change my mind about the source of sickness, for I seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. I will try today to find the source of healing, which is in my mind because my Father placed it there for me. It is not farther from me than myself. It is as near to me as my own thoughts; so close it is impossible to lose. I need but seek it and it must be found.
I will not be misled today by what appears to me as 'sick'. I will go beyond appearances today and reach the source of my healing, from which nothing is exempt. I will succeed to the extent to which I realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.
So do I lay aside my amulets, my charms and medicines, my chants and bits of magic in whatever form they take. I will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but this can cure. Today I hear a single Voice which speaks to me of truth, where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal, quiet home of God.
I waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to me five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before I go to sleep. My only preparation is to let my interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are all the same. I have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when I can hear my Father speak to me. I hear Him now. I come to Him today.
With nothing in my hands to which I cling, with lifted hearts and listening mind I pray:
Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to me, my Father, that I may be healed.
And I will feel salvation cover me with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb my mind, nor offer proof to me that it is real. This will I learn today. And I will say my prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes, to hear the answer to my prayer be given me as I attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to me. This is the day when separation ends, and I remember Who I really am.
posted by Rev. David Seacord at
9:00 AM
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