You are never far from healing,
for healing is not a destination.
It is more like a remembering;
a constant invitation.

It is like the Sun; always there,
yet sometimes hidden
by innocent clouds.

When you feel far from healing,
when doubt rages, and sorrow fills your being,
and pain stings and burns;
when yesterday’s joys seem so far away,
and tomorrow’s happiness is a distant fantasy;
when you feel like you’re living the wrong life,
and nothing seems possible,
stop, just for a moment.

Bring your attention out of past and future.
Invite curiosity into the moment.
Into the body, the breath.
This living scene. This day, this hour.

What’s it like to be alive, just for a moment?

Can you feel your feet on the earth?

Can you feel your belly rise and fall?

What if you’re not far from healing?

What if you’re not actually broken?

What if healing IS presence?

This timeless sense of being alive?

What if the future is unknown, and your fears are all in your mind?

What if the Sun never stops shining,
even as the storm rages?

– Jeff Foster

Question: “…I contacted you almost 4 years ago when my husband of 20 years, and the kindest, most supportive and best friend I’ve ever had, died suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of 43. I contacted you soon after and asked your thoughts about seeing a world famous medium and you said I should do whatever might help. I have received many messages of support from him since then in the form of readings from various mediums, a host of coincidences and even sightings in my daily life. These have been a great help in my embracing our eventually being reunited when I die. That said, I can’t apply the Course teachings to everything else and not this. If everything I experience here is what I’ve asked for that means all of my husband’s messages are coming from me and not him and that is crushing me. Literally. And now, the personal thought system is constantly telling me that if I continue with my Course studies, my husband will disappear from my memory because he was nothing but my own projection and that when I die I will not remember him and will never see him again and this, more than anything else, has interrupted and stalled my progress…Ken (Wapnick) said that the thoughts of love we have here are but shadows of what is beyond and you explained that Tim was a manifestation of the Love that I am. It’s all so confusing to me. Obviously I can’t go back, but I also do not want to give up the hope that I’ll see my husband again…” – SB

Liz’s Response: Only the Truth is eternal and unchanging. If you have something and lose it, it was an illusion. You seem to feel that either your husband was the source of your well-being or your relationship with him was the source of your well-being. If your well-being falls away when he is gone then it is not real, lasting well-being. It is an illusion of well-being.

But the good news is that you do have a Source of eternal, unchanging well-being within you. You won’t let go of your husband as long as you think he is the source of your well-being. You will let him go naturally when the Truth is true for you and you know that you can rest in Its eternal peace. There is no reason for you to feel guilty for your mistaking the source of your well-being. The Truth in you goes on whole and perfect, untouched by this. The path to true Peace, for everyone, is one of holding onto idols while growing your awareness of Truth. No one releases idols until they see that they do not work and they are aware of What does work. Your having an idol simply means that you are not yet aware enough of Truth to not have an idol. Growing that awareness is a process.

You also do not have to fear that you will lose idols that you are not ready to release. Nothing can be taken from you. What falls away does so because you are ready for it to do so. However, it is true that you will not continue on a path that you do not believe will bring you the unchanging peace that you seek. When you find yourself fearing that you may lose the memory of your husband as the source of your well-being remind yourself that this will fall away only when permanent Peace has come into your awareness. At that point you will not experience any loss. You will then remember your relationship with him, not as an idol that was the source of your well-being, but as a manifestation of your eternal well-being. There will no longer be any fear associated with this memory.

We have built up a set of ego habits for gaining satisfaction. For some it involves pleasure; for others, more neurotic, it involves pain. As you look at many people’s lives you see that their suffering is in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it. They make their lives a living hell, but a familiar one.

This network of thoughts has been your home since you can remember. Your home is safe and familiar. It may be sad and painful sometimes, but it’s home. And besides, you’ve never known any other. Because this structure has always been your home, you assume that it is what reality is – that your thoughts are Reality with a capital R.

If you start to use a method that makes gaps in this web of thoughts of who you are and what reality is, and if it lets the sunlight in and you peek out for a moment, might you not get frightened as the comforting walls of ego start to crumble? Might you not prefer the security of this familiar prison, grim though it sometimes may be, to the uncertainty of the unknown? You might at that point pull back toward the familiarity of your pain.

That is the critical point. For here is your choice: Whether you truly wish to escape from the prison or are just fooling yourself. For your ego includes both the suffering and the desire to be free of the suffering. Sometimes we use cures halfheartedly, with the secret hope that the cures will not work. Then we can hold on to our suffering while protesting we want to get free. But meditation does work. It gives you moments of sunlight – of clarity and detachment. Sooner or later you must either stop meditating, do it in a dishonest way, or confront your resistance to change.

When you begin meditation you may approach it as you would a new course in school, a new method to learn, a new goal to achieve. In the past when you took a new course you studied the rules of the game so you’d do well. You wanted to receive a high grade from the teacher, to get approval, or to be more powerful. As you advance in meditation, these external motives fall away. You begin to feel a spiritual pull from within. It is profound and it is scary.

– Ram Dass

One day I went atraipsing down to Windward Side.
There was a full moon blazing; the ocean at low tide.
I’d found a wild hair and convinced it was my night,
I went down to Windward grabbing everything in sight
As I was gadding all about, for twas all a lark to me,
I stumbled into an alleyway, far too dark to see.
I saw, when my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,
I was in no alley but a tattered smoky room.
Sitting in the far corner on a faded flower rug
Was a wrinkled old woman, her hand cupped around a mug.
Just as I glimpsed her, she beckoned me come near.
So I strutted on over, for what had I to fear.
I stood before her and she motioned me to sit
But I wanted t’know where I was and I’s taking none of it.
I was about to ask if my prankster friends were back in town
But instead, to my astonishment, I just sat right down.
I seemed to know what was to come, though we spoke not at all
For that was no mug in her hands but a crystal ball.
She reached out with her wrinkled paws, took my hands in hers,
Placed them on the milky sphere and the clouds began to stir.
“Don’t be afeared, my sweet,” she said, “I know what you’re looking for.
Unhappy with what you have at home, you’re looking to find more.
But I see no tall, dark stranger in your future trail
Nor, in truth, fame or riches, can I tell you of in detail.
Nor can I promise only happiness will be your destiny
But then, do you want the truth or only what you’d like to see?”
So I reached into myself to find out what I wanted to know
Then looked up and told her what I wished she would show
“Welcome to Windward Side,” she said, and her eyes took on a glow.
“Few choose windward to be the direction they want to go.
Now look into the crystal ball and to your future you’ll see the key.”
So I took a deep breath and peered inside, almost afraid to see.
Then..A figure took shape that I recognized and surprised as could be
I gasped…as I beheld the key…the key to my destiny, you see,
The figure was familiar because what I saw was me.