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.

Commentary on ACIM Lesson 139

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

 

'Love' is a personal discipline.....  

 

My friend in NYC shared with me recently 'from a Landmark personal development seminar she is in there' that:  "To get anything worth while done requires being able to get past the conversation 'I don't want to'".  I am very appreciative of this wisdom right now, as that 'I don't want to' voice has spoken to me 'a few times lately' when I am arising from my too-brief sleep in the middle of the night to create this Commentary.  Of course, a higher wisdom is speaking (and choosing) too.  That is "I am my word".  

 

It's not that I think this is so important 'to you'.  I know you'd get by without this.  And it's not that what I am saying has never been said before either.  But sometimes, it's never been said by me.  And I need to hear my whole Self 'under all conditions and circumstances', and be willing to demand that my body honor the voice of (and for) truth in me (as distinct from the voice of my 'desires').  This is the training program (or at least a part of it).  That in this illusion, the body serves, it does not rule.  (And I do sleep more, later.)

 

OK, that completes that.

 

What I was 'planning' to write about was something a bit different.  So now for the 'original commentary idea'... now that I am awake..... :-) 

 

I've been 'being primed' for this one.  I can see that as I look back on the insights that have made it to these pages in the last few days.  But it still occurred as a 'sacrilege' when the thought arose....  

 

I was in the home of a devoted woman of a conservative church today and noticed that on the wall above her piano was a religious painting of her faith.  It showed a future vision of Christ returning.  On one side of the painting were all the 'saved' people that He was 'welcoming into heaven'.  On the other side were all the ones who were 'going to hell'.  The sacrilege thought I heard in my head was:  "It's a lie."  

 

What? 'I' thought back. "It's not the truth."  Oh.  "Nobody is going to be lost."  Oh.  "Remember yesterday (in the Lesson) we covered that Truth cannot be brought 'to the illusion'?"  Yes.  "This is the illusion."  Right.  "This is where 'religion' has failed to grasp the total unity of Reality".  I Get it. (I was pretty much 'passed through' the sacrilege reaction by now...it was really just an old program from my own childhood religious indoctrination...) "So the Good News (which is what 'the Gospel' means) IS:  Everybody has a ticket to Heaven.  It's the only ticket they have because it's the only ticket there is.  And everybody is using that ticket RIGHT NOW (in order to simply be alive..).  That is what you will see when you have fully released ALL JUDGEMENT OF YOUR BROTHER.  AND OF YOURSELF.   And also, BTW, that is what you are here to 'teach' (by Being).  That only Love is Real....  

 

Epilogue....  What I see is more layers 'of the onionskin' are being peeled off me.  That's what my 'discipline' is for.  To keep hopping onto the divine kitchen chopping block and discovering 'I isn't that too', until who I isn't isn't anymore and who I is is what is left.  Said another way....  to walk the path of purification.  These days, seems like God is pretty much using every opportunity I give Him....  

 

I do recognize that this is more easily done the less attached I am to who I think I am....  

 

Namaste, 

 

David

____________________________

 

'Today's First Person version....'

 

Lesson 139

I will accept Atonement for myself.

Here in this moment is 'the end of indecision'. For here in this moment I come to 'a decision' to accept myself as God created me. And what isindecision except uncertainty of what I am? There is no doubt that is not rooted in this uncertainty. There is no question but that it reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, "What/Who am I?"

Yet who could even ask this question except a 'me' who has refused to recognize my true Self? Only my refusal to accept my Self's wholenesscould make the question even 'seem' to be sincere. The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. From this one point of certainty, it looks on other things as certain as itself.

Uncertainty about what I am and must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to 'know myself' is to believe that I am really dead. For what is life except to be myself, and what but myself can be alive instead? Who is this doubter in me? What is it I doubt? Whom do I question? Who can answer me?

This doubter merely states that he is 'not himself', and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is. Yet he could never be alive at all unless he knew the answer. If he asks as if he does not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. He has accepted it because he lives; BUT he has judged against it and denied its worth, and has decided that he does not know the only certainty there is, and 'by which he lives'.

Thus, he becomes uncertain of his life, for what life is has been denied by him. It is for the healing of this denial that I need Atonement. My denial of life has made no change in what I am. But I have split my mind into what knows and does not know the truth. Yet, I am myself. There is no doubt of this. And yet, 'I' doubt it. But.... I do not ask 'what part of me can really doubt myself'. (It cannot really be a part of me that asks this question.... For it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it actually part of 'me', then Certainty would be impossible.)

Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself, and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this mean except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal 'here' is true?

Nothing the world believes is true. 'The world' is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. And they will come again (and again, and again) until the time their Atonement 'is accepted', and that they learn it is impossible to A. doubt your (true) Self, and B. not to be aware of 'what you are'.

Only acceptance of this is be asked of me, for what I am is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in my own (which is His also). It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof I need to show that I believe the contradiction that I know not what I cannot fail to know. Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? Let me not allow my holy mind to occupy myself with senseless musings such as this.

I have a mission here. I did not come to reinforce the madness that I once believed in. Let me not forget the goal that I have accepted. It is more than just my happiness alone I came to gain. What I accept as what I am proclaims what everyone must be, along with me. Fail not my brothers, or I fail myself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of me, and I of them.

This does Atonement teach me, and demonstrates the Oneness of God's Son is unassailed by my belief I knows not what I am. Today I accept God's Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about myself, and go my way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that I am asked to do. It is but this that I will do today.

Five minutes in the morning and at night I will devote to dedicate my mind to my assignment for today. I start with this review of what my mission is:

I will accept Atonement for myself, 
For I remain as God created me.

I have not lost the knowledge that God gave to me when He created me like Him. I can remember it for everyone, for 'in creation are all minds as one'. 

And in my memory is the recall of how dear my brothers are to me in truth, how much a part of me is every mind, how faithful they have really been to me, and how my Father's Love contains them all.

In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with all aspects of creation, I repeat my dedication to 'God's cause' today each hour, as I lay aside all thoughts that would distract me from my holy aim. For several minutes I will let my mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around my true being, the holy Son of God. And I will learn the fragile nature of the chains that seem to keep the knowledge of myself apart from my awareness, as I say:

I will accept Atonement for myself, 
For I remain as God created me.

Commentary on ACIM Lesson 138

©Rev. David Seacord

 

Heaven is the decision I must make.

 

 

Maintaining my sanity....  the phrase (which is near the end of the lesson) sticks in my mind, ringing...

 

Is this not what we are all now doing, in doing this Course?  Gaining (or, re-gaining) and then 'maintaining our sanity' in this world.  As I see it, it's 'the only way' to be able to live that is free (or at least 'more free') of the illusions of the ego.  And it seems to me sometimes I am doing nothing else.  That life is, moment by moment, always a choice of either Love or fear.  And does the fear ever produce sanity?  Look and see....  if you can find ONE instance where fear has produced actual sanity, please show it to me.  For I can find none....  

 

Back in the mid-1980's when I was birthing 'The Love Declaration', I was clear that the entire world was operating on an 'owners manual' that was fear derived in it's totality.  That is why the first line of that writing is: I am your partner in awakening from fear.  For that is the true work we have with each other. When I am being who I really am, that is who I am being.  

 

Today I had a beautiful moment of sanity, or 'recognition'.  As I drove by a country intersection past a car waiting to enter the highway, my eyes met the eyes of the driver of the other car for a brief instant.  There was a conscious connection (of recognition that we both existed) between us in that instant.  Nothing unusual, right? But as I drove on, I replayed the moment, and then replayed it again, only differently.  I imagined that I had been 'awake enough' to have expressed something more real... maybe to have waved at the other driver, or that I had smiled at him, like he was my best friend.  Suddenly, I was 'tripping' (in my imagination only [just to be clear :-) ]) and a huge insight opened about JOY.   I saw that if I had waved and smiled, and then waved and smiled at the next and the next and the next and the next etc, that if I did that, I would be BEING JOY 'FULL'.   And that that kind of JOY is all about BEING COMPLETELY CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING WITH NO FEAR.  No wonder we don't act like that!   The world has taught us that that would be crazy, or 'dangerous'.  That we would be 'locked up' (to protect the world from catching our disease, no less, Right?)   

 

But that is what people that are truly awake are like!  They are 'fearlessly connected to everything', and fully expressing it, right in the middle of the world.  This is 'the reversal of the world'.  Not to scare you, but this is where we are going (although your version of being completely and fearlessly connected may be different, and not as 'out of the box' as mine, and that's OK...  God will direct you perfectly too...) 

 

Now, there's a song waiting to be written....    "No need to fear, no need to hide, nothing to change....and God will direct you perfectly too..."  (Add your own melody....)

 

Enough for now.  Peace always. 

 

Namaste, 

 

David 

__________________

And now, my lovingly edited 'first person' version....

 

Lesson 138

Heaven is the decision I must make.

In this world Heaven is 'a choice' i 'have', but only because in this world i 'believe' there are alternatives to choose between. i 'think' that all things have an opposite, and what i want i choose (and what i don't want, i don't choose). And logically, if Heaven exists, there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way i make what i perceive, and what i think is real.

True Creation knows no opposite. But here (in this world) is opposition part of being "real." It is this strange (mis)perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God's creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could (or will) only be perceived with fear (instead of Love). For this would be the error 'truth can be brought to illusions' (which is impossible). Opposition (to the truth) makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come (unless/until it is welcomed).

'Choice' is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites.Decision lets the one 'chosen' (of the conflicting goals) become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without a decision, time is but a waste and effort is dissipated. Effort is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.

I need to be reminded that when I think a thousand choices are confronting me, there is really only one choice to be made. And even this only seems to be a choice. I would choose to not confuse myself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. I will make only one. And when that one is made, I will perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true. There is no opposite to choose instead.  There is no contradiction to the truth.

Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Mine are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer me. Decisions are the outcome of my learning, for they rest on what I have accepted as the truth of what I am, and what my 'needs' must be.

In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices I have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If I could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when I solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.

So I begin today by considering the choice that time was made to help me make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed fromthe intent I gave it (that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome by death). In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. Thus I perceive that to resolve the conflict is to end 'my life' as well.

 

In my dream of being 'a separated one', these mad beliefs can gain an unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip my mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be 'saved from salvation', threatened to 'be safe', and magically armored 'against' truth. And these decisions are made unconsciously and unaware, in order to keep them 'safely undisturbed'; hidden and apart from question and from reason and from doubt.

In an opposite manner, heaven is consciously chosen. But this choice cannot be authentically made until all the alternatives are accurately seen and clearly understood. Therefore, all that is 'veiled in shadows' must be 'raised to understanding' (to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help). And all mistakes in judgment(i.e., 'sins') that the mind had made 'before Now' are now reopened to correction, and the truth then 'dismisses them as causeless' (for they never actually even existed). Now are they become 'completely without effects'. And they cannot be concealed or hidden any longer either, because their nothingness is recognized.

The conscious choice of Heaven is made (as surely as is the ending of the fear of hell is made), when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. Who but I can decide for me between the clearly seen and the unrecognized?And why would I fail to make a  correct choice between such alternatives (when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a 'but imagined source' of guilt and pain?) Why would I hesitate to make a choice like this? And I shall not hesitate to choose today.

Today, I make the choice for Heaven as I wake, and spend five minutes making sure that I have made the one decision that is sane. I recognize that in doing this, I make a conscious choice between A. what has existence and B. what has nothing 'but an appearance of the truth'. Its pseudo-being, when brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the holy light of truth. It holds no terror for me now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands the obscurity for fear (to be invested there). Now it is recognized as but a foolish and trivial mistake (which calls only for correction).

Before I close my eyes in sleep tonight, I will reaffirm the choice that I have made each hour in between. And now I will give the last five minutes of my waking day to the decision with which I awoke. As every hour passed, I have declared my choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining my sanity. And finally, I close the day with this thought, acknowledging I chose but what my soul truly desires:

Heaven is the decision I now make. 
I make it now, and will not change my mind, 
because it is the only thing I truly desire.

 

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

________________________

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.

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

_______________________

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.