[acimlessons_list] Lesson 356 - December 22

Tue Dec 21 06:04:50 EST 2004

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+ COMMENTARIES ON LESSONS FROM THE WORKBOOK OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES
+ by Allen Watson, with Practice Summaries by Robert Perry, 
+ of The Circle of Atonement
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LESSON 356 - December 22

"Sickness is but another name for sin. 
Healing is but another name for God. 
The miracle is thus a call to Him."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

Purpose: To take the last few steps to God. To wait for Him to take the
final step.

Morning/Evening Quiet Time: as long as needed.

Read the written lesson.

Use idea and prayer to introduce time of quiet. Do not depend on the words.
Use them as a simple invitation to God to come to you.

Sit silently and wait for God. Wait in quiet expectancy for Him to reveal
Himself to you. Seek only direct, deep, wordless experience of Him. Be
certain of His coming, and unafraid. For He has promised that when you
invite Him, He will come. You ask only that He keep His ancient promise,
which He wills to keep. These times are your gift to Him.

Hourly Remembrance: Do not forget.

Give thanks to God that He has remained with you and will always be there to
answer your call to Him.

Frequent Reminder: As often as possible, even every minute.

Remember the idea. Dwell with God, let Him shine on you.

Response To Temptation: When you are tempted to forget your goal.

Use idea as a call to God and all temptation will disappear.

Reading: preceding one of the day's moments of practice.

Slowly read "What is...?" section.

Think about it a while.

Overall Remarks: Now, in this final part of the year that you and Jesus have
spent together, you begin to reach the goal of practicing and of the course.
Jesus is so close that you cannot fail. You have come far along the road. Do
not look back. Fix you eyes on the journey's end. You could not have come
this far without realizing that you want to know God. And this is all He
requires to come to you.

(See also Part II Introduction)

COMMENTARY

It seems to me the Course is always equating things you don't expect to be
equated, like it does here: Sickness is another name for sin; healing is
another name for God. And toward the end of the lesson, "to call Your Name
is but to call his own." That is, the Son's own name, or my own name. The
Course suggests that when we find God we will have found our Self, and when
we find our Self, we will have found God; we and God share the same Name. It
seems to be constantly saying that things we believe are quite different
are, in reality, the same. Its advice for a new year is, "Make this year
different by making it all the same" (T-15.XI.10:11). The Course is
constantly boiling everything down to just one problem, the separation, and
one solution, the Atonement. And it tells us that complexity is of the ego;
therefore, simplicity is of God.

How are sickness and sin the same thing? First, dispense with what this does
not mean: that being sick is a sin. Anyone who has gone through the entire
Workbook and studied the Text cannot possibly hold that mistaken
understanding; that is most definitely not the meaning here. There is no
such thing as sin; we only imagine there is. This lesson is most
emphatically not saying that if you are sick it is because you are a sinful
person, or that being sick makes you a sinner. Being sick is nothing to be
guilty about! If you are sick, and anyone even suggests to you that "You
must be doing something wrong because spiritual people don't get sick," stop
listening to that person. The thoughts of our minds do indeed cause
sickness. "All sickness is mental illness" (P-2.IV.8:1) according to the
Psychotherapy pamphlet. But mistaken thoughts are not "sin'" they are simply
mistaken.

When the lesson says that sickness is another name for sin, it means that
the sickness of the body is a reflection or manifestation of the mind's
belief in the reality of sin. Sickness, says the Course, can be a kind of
self-punishment, in which we attack ourselves because of our guilt, hoping
thereby to avert the punishment of God we are expecting. "Sickness is anger
taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain" (T-28.VI.5:1).

I believe that when the Course uses the word sickness it is usually
referring to the thought of sickness and not to the physical symptoms.
("Sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body,"
M-5.II.3:2). A crippled limb, for instance, can be used by the ego to
further thoughts of inadequacy, guilt, and separation, or it can be used by
the Holy Spirit to break a person's identification with the body and to turn
them to God. It is the thought, and only the thought, which is important.

Sickness is "a defense against the truth" (W-pI.136). We have to remember
that in the thought system of the Course everything, including sickness, is
a choice we have made, and that choices must have some purpose behind them.
The important thing is not the physical symptom. The important thing is the
choice, and the purpose behind it.

When we choose to be sick, at some level we are choosing to identify
ourselves as a body rather than a spirit or mind. The "truth" we are
defending against is that we are a spirit or mind. We are defending against
the realization that we are one with God and with everyone else, in God.
"The strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this
little pile of dust [is] silenced and stilled" when we are sick
(W-pI.136.8:4). Sickness makes the body seem very real, the only real thing.
It seeks to let the illusion of the bodily identity take the place of the
truth of our mind, our spiritual identity.

How is that like sin? According to the Workbook, sin "is the means by which
the mind...seeks to let illusions take the place of truth" (W-pII.4.1:2).
That is exactly what sickness does! When I see "sin" in myself or in a
brother, it proves he is evil, and therefore separate from God. When I see
"sickness" in myself or in another, it proves the body is real and therefore
separate from God.

Sin and sickness are the same in that both are means that the mind uses to
try to prove that the separation is real. They are not the same in form, but
they are identical in purpose. They are both the ego's attempt to prove that
I am what I am not. It is the thought of separation which the Course aims to
heal, not the physical symptom of sickness, and not the specific behavior of
a person. The Course is concerned with the cause and not the effect.

I do believe that if the mind is healed--if the person is healed on the
level of thought (which is the level of cause)--it will often result in
changes in the form of the person's life. Behavior will often change when
thoughts change; physical health will often improve when thoughts change.
The change on the level of the body, however, is never the concern of the
Course. The body is insignificant (M-5.II.3:12), which means it is without
meaning. If the body is insignificant, it means that the body signifies
nothing. If our thoughts align with God's Thought, the body will serve the
purpose of the Holy Spirit whatever its form. Even if the body dies. The
Course is concerned only with healing the mind because the body does not
matter.

"Healing is but another name for God" (W-pII.356). To heal the mind,
therefore, means to recognize the identity of my mind and God's mind. To be
healed is to recognize that I share God's nature. When the Course talks of
healing, it is not talking about getting over the flu! It is talking about
letting go of my identification with this body that appears to be suffering
chills and fever, recognizing that the body is not my Self, but that I am
the eternal Son of God. It is speaking, as always, of a change of mind. When
the identify of myself and my body is broken, I will know that what happens
to the body does not affect who I really am; therefore, what happens to the
body does not matter to me. It may get well and it may not; if I am no
longer identified with it, I don't care which it is.

If the thought that brought about the physical sickness was a thought of
sin, guilt, or fear, then when I let go of that thought the body will heal
itself. If the thought that brought about the physical sickness was a higher
thought, whose purpose was the healing of my mind or the minds of those
around me, the body may continue to seem to be sick. I, however, the person
I am, which is mind, will be healed. And that is all that matters.

Sin and sickness are the same thing in the sense that both are
manifestations of our belief in separation and our resulting (but mistaken)
guilt. They are both healed through the miracle of forgiveness. Healing is a
return to wholeness, a return to our true Self, and since our Self is one
with God, all healing is a return to God. To offer a miracle of forgiveness
or healing is "thus a call to Him" (Lesson 356).

Another way of putting this is that all healing leads to God in the end,
even if we are not thinking of or believing in God as we experience it. If
it is healing, it is of God. The Psychotherapy pamphlet says, "The patient
need not think of truth as God in order to make progress in salvation"
(P-1.IN.5:1). If there is healing, and forgiveness instead of condemnation,
God is there, even if He is not named or acknowledged. Everyone who learns
to forgive will remember God.

"It does not matter where he is, what seems to be his problem, nor what he
believes he has become" (1:2). God answers when we call even when we don't
realize we are calling Him and, if we did, would think we did not deserve
any answer. I believe there are hundreds of times we have called on God, and
He has answered, and we never made the connection. We failed to recognize
Him even as we received His help. Our very pain and fear, the Course says,
is a call for help. Do you imagine that if the Holy Spirit recognizes all
calls for help as what they are, that He does not answer every one of them?

"He is Your Son, and You will answer him" (1:3). He answers us with His
Name, which is a shorthand way of saying His Being or His Nature. We are
answered by what God is, because what He is is what we, as His Son, are. God
is without sin, and so are we; without sin we cannot be sick, because
sickness comes from belief in sin. When I realize my total innocence I
"cannot suffer pain" (1:5). God's Name is what speaks to me of that
innocence and tells me it must be so. How could God's offspring be unholy?

Let me learn, then, to call on God (whether I use that word or not). Let me
open my heart to innocence, gentleness and mercy. Let me make healing my
aim, for myself and for others. In every encounter today let me remember: I
am here to heal; I am here to offer miracles; I am here to free from guilt.

What Am I? (Part 6)

W-pII.14.3:5-7

Our function, then, is to bring salvation to the world. "We do not seek a
function that is past the gate of Heaven" (3:5). In other words, we do not
disdain this "lowly" calling of bringing healing to this world of form; we
do not try to claim that we are fulfilling our function of creating (which
is our function in Heaven), and cannot be bothered with the base forms
within the illusion. Doing that is what one of my old Christian teachers
used to call "being too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly use."

"Knowledge will return when we have done our part" (3:6). "Knowledge" refers
to the perfection of Heaven, to direct knowing of the truth, rather than the
lower avenue of perception of forms. "Our part" is to purify our perception
of forms. Our part is to work within the illusion, to turn the nightmare
into a happy dream; only when we have done this will knowledge return.

"We are concerned only with giving welcome to the truth" (3:7). We are not
trying to directly apprehend the truth. We are not focused on having
mystical experiences of God, on bypassing the world of form and leaving it
behind, although, to be sure, we DO seek to enter the holy instant
frequently to renew our vision of Heaven. Our primary concern, however, is
on "giving welcome to the truth," that is, preparing ourselves for it,
making things ready for it, educating ourselves to accept it. And that is
something that goes on within this world, within this illusion we call
physical life. Here, the many holy instants we experience (and which we
desire to experience above all things) lead to a result: the Holy Spirit
sends us out in "busy doing" here within the world, carrying with us the
quiet center we have found in the holy instant, and sharing it with the
world (T-18.VII.8:1-5). 

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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
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