Lesson 137. When I am healed, I am not healed alone.
Today’s lesson focuses on healing.
It may seem to emphasize sickness, but were we to do that in this tip, we would maintain a misplaced focus on the outer. You have all heard me bemoan the limitations of ACIM and it’s unfortunate language, which seems to encourage us to maintain the belief in ourselves as bodies—at least as body/mind/personalities. In actuality, it’s not the Course that’s hung up there, it’s simply the nature of the thinking mind.
When we read the word ”sickness,” our thoughts go to the body. Thus, even when we read that only the mind can be sick and that only by healing the mind are we able to cure our sickness, somehow, we carry our body delusion into that sentence and interpret it to say that, if my body is sick, I have failed in the healing of my mind. (Most of us go on to conclude that, therefore, I am bad, but that is a lesson for another day).
Today’s lesson referred to healing as a “counter-dream.” It is important to realize that both sickness and health are illusions. Some people make the mistake of putting health above sickness spiritually. They feel sickness is a sign of spiritual weakness or failure, and health is the badge of spiritual success. This is not at all true.
There are some very healthy people who have not even started to move towards spiritual Awakening, and there are enlightened people who have had sick bodies.
This misconception points to a larger misconception. The spiritual path isn’t about replacing bad dreams with good dreams. It is about waking from dreams entirely.
NTI 2 Peter calls this waking from dreams Abundance. “As you reach for true abundance, you accept everything as you. In this, there can be nothing that is missing. Abundance is full awareness of your divine nature.”
ACIM calls sickness “not right-mindedness.” It then tells us, “All forms of not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement for yourself.”
We accept the Atonement for ourselves by accepting our own Divinity. We accept our Divinity by removing our believing attention from the thinking mind.
“Without [the thinking] mind you look on illusion and see that it is nothing to affect your smile. In your seeing, you love it. In your loving it, it disappears from what it seemed to be and is only that which it has always been. … Peace is found in the abundance of the Heart, because in the awareness of your truth all other thoughts are laid to rest. There is no truth but You, and so there are no thoughts that have power over you. Rejoice in your abundance! You are everything and everything you see comes from you. This is the truth that sets you free.”
