12.03.06

The Laws of Healing (Jun 20,1997)

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Notes from a talk given by Linda and James Hale

Opening Reading

Let me recognize my problems have been solved. W-p1.80

Contents

Please note that these are the notes we used in our presentation, thus they do not read as if they were written as an article. Also the quotes we used in the presentation are, in the main, only given by their reference in the second edition. Please look these up as they are quite relevant.

The Laws of Healing

What is healing and what needs to be healed?

It seems appropriate to open our talk on “The Laws of Healing” by first looking at what healing is, as defined by the Course. We will look at this however, by following the Course’s approach of examining what it is not so that we may inevitably come to a well-grounded understanding of what it is.

The Course says this of the pedagogical device of difference and contrast:

You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek.
T-13.XI.6:2-3

The Course’s concept of healing, particularly in our time of spiritual revival and New Age movements is likely to be misunderstood, or at least be somewhat confusing if not seen from an understanding of the Course’s metaphysical foundation. If our aim or purpose is, as the Course defines it, healing, it is necessary we be very clear about what it is we need to avoid and therefore by implication, seek.

Stated quite simply, the Course does not aim at healing the body. This can be understood primarily at the simple bodily level; for example, if one has cancer or a cold, healing is not identified as curing the cancer or the cold, as these are seen as merely symptoms. This idea can be easily accommodated by many other spiritual systems. Indeed many systems see physical symptoms as indications of deeper ills. But the Course is even more radical than this. The aim of healing has nothing to do with , for example, changing the thought such as “I am not wanted” which may be behind a physical symptom, or on another level, cleansing one’s chakrasor etheric body. Healing is not even seen as the progression from one level of development to succeedingly finer levels. The reason for this is to be found in the radical nature of the metaphysical foundation of the Course. The Course’s teaching is that there is nothing in need of healing at all. Our reality, which has no need of healing, has not been affected one iota by our apparent descent into the world of separation, individuality, madness and sick illusions. To recall Jesus’ summation of the Course in its introduction

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
T-in.2:2-3

Contained within these few words is the reversal of all that we know for they are saying that anything, absolutely anything that can be threatened, be it physical, psychological or spiritual does not in reality exist! This includes the entire manifest universe, and, more importantly for us, the entire world we seem to experience. Our reality however, is totally and eternally unaffected by anything. But if our reality has been, and is, totally unaffected, then what is the problem? What requires healing? Simply our belief that we are unhealed.

We do not believe in our invulnerability. We do not believe in our inheritance as God’s Son, and it is that belief, and its “hidden” consequences, existing deep within our minds that is the root cause of the world of sickness, separation and finally death that we but seem to experience. It is this belief that is the only problem and thus the only “sickness” in need of healing. The Course’s radical understanding of what is in need of healing and how that healing is accomplished is encapsulated in these lines:

The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, not kept separate…T-26.VII.14:1-4

 

What Needs Healing?

Early in “The Laws of Healing” Jesus states:

All sickness comes from separation. …T-26.VII.2

Sickness, as defined by the Course, is anything that speaks to us of illusion, or in other words, denies the truth of who we are. The root of all our perceived problems, sickness or dis-ease, is separation or, to be more exact, the belief that separation from God has been accomplished. However the key idea stated above is that this relationship is kept hidden in darkness. The process of healing, in the Course’s terms, may be seen to be one of uncovering this relationship and bringing it out into the light.

The seed of this hidden relationship was born when Unity appeared to be replaced by separation, love by a hateful thought of attack, and when time, with its never ending cycle of birth and death, apparently destroyed the eternal. This was the “tiny mad idea” which crept into the mind of God’s Son, an idea He forgot to laugh at. In the section titled “The Little Hindrance” this instant is referred to as the “ancient” past:

Only in the past,–an ancient past, too short to make a world in answer to creation,–did this world appear to rise. …T-26.V.5:3-4

This is the unbelievable truth the Course is pointing to–that the mad idea and the entire universe of madness it gave rise to–does not exist and did not affect the unity of Heaven at all:

The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. …T-26.V.5:1-2

And yet we continue to maintain it, keep it alive and ignore the truth. Our unforgiving thoughts reflect and maintain the dynamics of difference and specialness and keep a part of the mind of God’s Son locked into the delusional thought system of separation. In maintaining this dynamic, we forget who we are (God’s Son) and where we are (Heaven):

Yet in each unforgiving act or thought, in every judgment and in all belief in sin, is that one instant still called back…T-26.V.5:5-7

That’s the bad news; the good news is that God, in His mercy, has not left us alone, to dream our nightmarish dream. His Answer is the Holy Spirit, the memory of His Love which can never be lost because it is in our minds. And what God gives, is given completely and completely received.

God gave His Teacher to replace the one you made, not to conflict with it…T-26.V.3

Time, like the manifest universe, is seen as a magician’s trick, long since over. Indeed, it is only within the context of the Course’s teaching about the vast illusion of time that the workbook lessons 79, “Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved” and 80, “Let me recognize my problems have been solved” can be understood:

W-pI.79.1.

Once again we are told that the solution has been given and only awaits our recognition of what the real problem is: the hidden relationship of separation and sin. This lesson is also reminiscent of a section of chapter 26 entitled “The Borderland”, which opens with the statement:

Complexity is not of God…T-26.III.1:1-5

There is no hope of there being a solution to our problems (healing) while we do not recognise what the problem is. Therein lies the apparent power of the ego, because as long as we remain unaware of what the true problem is, there is no hope of healing, which according to the Course, is simply accepting the solution that has already be given and received.

W-pI.79.6:1

That is why it is important for Course students, if they are to live its teaching, to come to a very clear understanding of what its definition of sickness and healing are.

M-5.II.2:1-2

Healing is made possible because of the nature of truth and love; as long as truth and love are not accepted as they are, healing is impossible in our experience. The chaotic “laws” of the ego operate solely to hide this truth from us behind the ever changing forms of this world, the very ebb and flow of apparent life. Not being proud, the ego will gladly utilise our changing awareness and experience of life as we study the Course itself. In doing so the ego seems to accept our path of salvation but only if it is seen to be a long and arduous journey. But we are counselled:

Yet the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever…T-26.VIII.6:2-5

 

The Laws of Healing.

Let us turn to examine the principles of truth and love. Our pedagogical technique will be one of contrast. We will look at the “laws” which maintain the world of sick illusions and contrast them with the laws of healing which reflect our truth.

Ideas can leave their source–Ideas cannot leave their source.

We have discussed that all sickness comes from separation, and, in believing that the separation had been accomplished, the belief in the reality of sin emerged. We are told:

Guilt asks for punishment, and its request is granted. Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sin.
T-26.VII.3:1-2

The belief in separation and therefore sin presupposes, however, that God’s Son could change what He is as God created Him. This is another way of saying that a Thought of God could leave its Source and become something other than the totality and completeness which it is. The preposterousness of this was highlighted in the quote cited from the “The Little Hindrance” section (“God gave His teacher…”)

This is another way of stating the Atonement principle: God’s Son is guiltless, and at the very most, only made an error which needed (and has been) corrected. Many parts of the Course speak of the changeless nature of God’s Son. Lesson 228 expresses it beautifully when it says:

God has condemned me not. No more do I…W-pII.228

This also forms the basis of that important workbook lesson; “I am as God created me” which is repeated three times as individual lessons and forms the basis of the last review section of part one of the workbook. The whole ego thought system is built upon a lie. We can only see this, however, when we contrast it with the truth, which is why the Course repeatedly emphasises the importance of bringing illusion to truth:

What is perceived takes many forms, but none has meaning…T-26.VII.3:7-9

We will examine the significance of looking at things exactly as they are in the healing process later.

Cause and effect can be reversed–Cause and its effect abide in an eternal , changeless relationship.

Projection makes perception is another key idea in undoing the ego’s tricks. The ego would have us believe that what we see outside of ourselves has an effect upon us. That what we perceive is indicative of the truth. Yet we are told that “…perception is a wish fulfilled.” (T-26.VII.3:3) We see in order to confirm a wish we have already made. We are not made angry by the act of another but rather we seek out the act of another to justify our anger. That which we seek out can be a person, a government, an idea or even an illness.

We seek it out and give it the role of causation, when in reality it is but the effect of a decision we have made. A decision made to deny the role of causation to the only thing that can be causative: our mind. And here we glimpse the insanity of it all, for the mind is making a decision that robs it of its own power.

Sickness is a decision.

Sickness is an: …

election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is strength. When this occurs, real strength is seen as threat and health as danger. Sickness is a method, conceived in madness…
M-5.I.1-4-7

This “real strength” is represented by the healing of God’s Son, but in the Son’s madness healing is interpreted as:

…the defeat of God’s Son and the triumph of his Father over him.
M-5.I.2:2

And so our resistance to healing, even if it “means” death, represents out triumph over God,

But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength. Now has he given himself what God would give to him, and thus entirely usurped the throne of his Creator.
M-5.I.2:7-8

We need to understand that the “sicknesses” of this world are distractions and diversions made by us solely to keep us focused where the solution is not: “outside” of our mind.

Perception’s laws seek only to help hide from us the relationship we discussed earlier, between the belief in sin and its consequence as sickness. They, and the world that arose to prove them, are elaborate ruses to convince us that cause and effect are not only reversed, but separate. This reversal in roles serves to convince us of a greater reversal, namely we are no longer an effect of our Creator. In believing this we feel lost and alone, yet this need not be.

Cause and effect are one, not separate…T-26.VII.13:1-2

Sin can be denied and projected–Sin does not exist.

Laws of mind are constant, and what holds for God’s Mind also holds for the thoughts of God’s Mind; His Son. It also holds for the missthoughts of His Son, the thoughts of separation. The guilt engendered by the belief in separation is enormous. For to believe it possible is to believe Heaven is destroyed. The Course aptly names this “the time of terror”, and it is an instant we relive with each unforgiving thought we hold:

T-26.V.13.

It is this terror, guilt, and the tremendous fear of punishment that is engendered, which literally drives the Son of God out of His mind. He tries to bury it deep within, denying its very existence but the guilt is too great. The only recourse He thinks open to himself is to literally throw it out of his mind. This compels him to make the specifics upon which to project his guilt (special hate) or from which to extract innocence (special love) in exchange for guilt.

And yet this whole endeavour is completely futile; ideas cannot leave their source, the idea of sin cannot leave its source; it can only remain buried and denied. This very mechanism of denial (burying) and projection compounds and confirms our deep suspicion of our own guilt, and a viscous circle is thus created. The denial seems to help us forget, the projection continues to distract us. While we are focused on the level of form in the world we cannot break free from the ego’s thought system and illusions have therefore served their purpose:

Illusions serve the purpose they were made to serve…T-26.VII.151-2

If we are fixed upon seeing sin outside of our mind (and our body/personality/brain is also outside of our mind) then we cannot even begin to address the problem of our feeling deeply unworthy and vaguely guilty for some sin. We pay a high price indeed for our apparent separation and individuality.

T-26.VII.8:7-10

Accepting the Atonement means accepting that not only can sin notbe projected–it does not even exist. At most, an error occurred, which on a deeper level has already been corrected, and, on the level of time and space, simply waits upon our wish that truth be true, to be experienced here.

T-26.VII.10:1

There is a hierarchy of Illusions–There is no order of difficulty of miracles.

Traditional sickness seems to provide many opportunities to believe in the first “law” of chaos and to think that:

“…one illusion be less amenable to truth than are the rest.”
T-26.VII.6:1

But the very first principle upon which this Course is founded is that there is no order of difficulty in miracles, and there are no exceptions. All a hierarchy tells us is that we have a preference, a wish for partial healing, not reality. From the very introduction, right through to its end, the Course is consistent in its insistence that there can be no exception to Truth. What God has created whole, is whole, now and forever. What is not whole is not real. It is an illusion. It is nothing.

Illusions are illusions and are false…T-26.VII.6:7-9

We are reminded time and time again that our preference does not alter reality but merely hides it from us. We cannot make true what isn’t true, but we can certainly believe in it. In the strangely distorted world of the ego we can even transform this reversal into a tool “supporting” truth. A major trap the ego places before us in our understanding of this dynamic is the belief in the need to defend truth. After all, what could be more holy? Jesus addresses this many times throughout the Course but perhaps most practically in the Manual for Teacherssection entitled, “How Do God’s Teachers Deal With Magic Thoughts?” This is a very important section that is worth revisiting many times, especially when one feels a need to defend the truth, for then we have forgotten the very basis of the Atonement in that:

(it)…needs no defense to make it true.
T-26.VII.8:2

Holding grievances (Attack ) will save me–Forgiveness enables me to see I am saved.

Within the ego’s delusional system, holding grievances is a way of proving that someone or something else has victimised me; implicitly, therefore, I am innocent, another is guilty. With this device I have maintained a sense of separation but I have also apparently off-loaded my own sense of guilt.

Holding grievances, however, constitutes an attack on unity and on innocence. In my judgement of another, I feel separate; in judging at all, I am teaching myself and my brother that we are unworthy and unlovable. Thus the ego’s fundamental belief in sin remains unchallenged.

The ego’s plan for salvation centers around holding grievances…W-pI.71.2.

While I continue to look outside myself, I will never find the one solution within me. The ego’s dictum is, after all, seek but do not find.

The Course’s promise is, however, that behind each grievance lies the miracle of true seeing. The seeing that sees the innocence of God’s Son. Forgiveness involves relinquishing our judgements to the Holy Spirit’s healing grace, so that a change of mind can be effected through us. This shift in perception is the miracle and is spoken of beautifully in Workbook lesson 78, “Let Miracles Replace All Grievances.”

…W-pI.78.2.

Healing: Implications for practice.

The miracle is the means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result.
T-2.IV.1:2

We might also add: Forgiveness is the process!

It is perhaps appropriate here to take stock of our discussion and highlight some of the ideas we have covered in a more pragmatic way.

Accepting the Atonement

Atonement does not need to be earned, worked towards nor sacrificed for; it simply waits to be accepted.

Yet has God given answer to the world of sickness…T-26.VII.4:2-6

Looking for the solution within.

Whenever we are looking for solutions outside the mind or in the world of form, we are working with symptoms, stuck in the world of complexity. We must see our responsibility for what we experience. We must recognise, albeit dimly, the source of what we perceive.

The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, not kept separate…T-26.VII.14:1-3

Until we ready to accept this we are not yet at a genuine choice point, for while we are content with illusions we only appear to have a choice between them. For the miracle to happen we have to be quiet (within our mind) and be willing to “do nothing” in order to realise what the real choice is. Only then are we entering the “Borderland” or the “real world.”

Until then we may find it necessary to continue to use compromise in our approach to healing.

T-2.IV.4:5-6

Although this is speaking as if it is referring to another, it applies equally to the miracle worker himself. Remember the “you” you thought you were (are) is just as much as outside your mind as any brother you may happen to “see.”

Accepting what we have made–looking at it with the Holy Spirit.

Before we can look at the truth we need to look at the false that we have made to take its place. We must accept our responsibility and our deeply buried desire to deny the truth of what we are. This is not about the affirmation of truth, which is but another form of defence, but about the denial of our denial of truth. It is only when these “defences” against the truth are seen, with the Holy Spirit beside us, that the need for projection ceases.

Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else…W-pII.333.1

Choosing to let go our own judgements–Forgive!

Forgiveness is “seeing” what is true, something that we, on our own, are unable to do. We can only “do” this if we are willing to let go of our own judgement and thus allow the Holy Spirit to judge for us. It is this recognition, that we on our own cannot not judge, that allows us to enter the Course process and begin to awaken from our nightmarish world of “good and evil.”

Forgiveness represents our willingness to let go of the sense of separation in order to join.

The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.
T-26.IX.6:1

We have let go the obstacles to the awareness of Love’s presence, and are therefore able to see what was always there, but which they hid. This is what is meant by the idea the miracle does nothing.

A miracle can make no change at all…T-26.VII.20:4-5

Accepting the Holy Spirit’s purpose for the world and our relationships.

God gave to all illusions that were made another purpose that would justify a miracle whatever form they took.
T-26.VII.15:3

The ego made the world to crucify God’s Son and to prove that he is indeed a separate sinner, worthy of suffering, sickness and finally death. The Holy Spirit’s lesson, symbolised by the life of Jesus, is that within crucifixion redemption is laid. In any instant we can choose the life of Christ, rather than apparent death; we can choose to forgive our collective illusions, rather than condemn on the basis of them; we can choose to join, rather than remain isolated in our ego self. That shift in purpose is the miracle and represents what healing really is.

Forget not that the healing of God’s Son is all the world is for. That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it has. T-24.VI.4:1-2

Conclusion

It is important to respect where we think we are (as the Course does) and not endeavour to exceed the purpose of the Course. Our intellect may be able to communicate and contemplate these abstract truths but our ego self is certainly too entrenched and fearful to really accept them.

The metaphysics of the Course can be used to judge ourselves insanely (remember the ego is not proud and will use anything.) If we attempt to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit we will end up feeling frustrated and more fearful, which is not a miraculous way to be. To usurp His function is to continue to commit the same error over and over again. Is it any wonder we feel frustrated at times?

Recall the important statement:

The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself.
T-2.V.5:1

and what it means to be a Teacher of God.

The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. M-22.1:10

Healing or salvation is, in practice, doing nothing. Even at the mind level we do nothing except allow the Holy Spirit to undo our delusional thought system. “We” do not effect the “cure” because “we”, the ones who feel separate, are the problem!

So we are back to the theme–one problem, one Answer. Once we allow that lesson to be generalised we can say that sufficient quantitative change has occurred for there to be a qualitative shift. This is the transition into the borderland:

There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven…
T-26.III.2.

This is the goal of the Course. With the gifts of forgiveness laid before the altar of God, the memory of God is not far behind. The way has been made for God to take the final step. This is inevitable and something we need not doubt, because the “unbelievable” truth is that He already has.

“Portions from A Course in Miracles Copyright © 1975, 1985, 1992 reprinted by permission of the Foundation for Inner Peace, Inc. The ideas represented herein are the personal interpretation of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the copyright holder.

Linda & James

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