False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a “nicer” one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health.
This is probably what feels most difficult to us in looking at ACIM’s view of healing. With so many concepts and principles and modalities that are here in the world in reference to healing, it still can confound us that this is still all a dream. But it is true, sick or healthy, the body is an illusion. True healing is forgiveness showing us that we are more than what we see with the body’s eyes and the body’s other senses and experiences.
In the Text, we have learned that the body is merely a tool of which we can put in service to the ego or the Holy Spirit. Here we see again the body has been used by us as a home as we remember our true home. We do not curse the body, but we thank it. It has provided us a service and nothing more. Thank you body for allowing me to learn all that I needed to learn to remember my true nature.
In this section, Jesus also speaks of death. Traditionally, we see death differently. It is not what we think. It is not something to fear. We are not held fast by the body, nor is our identity held fast in it. We are something so much more.
This is why the higher prayer comes into play. It is to remind us that we are above the body, above the illusion and only as God created us to be, as an extension of His Holy Self. Healing is complete. It is done. It does not need to be repeated. (See the Manual for Teachers above this)
As you see, it always comes down to forgiveness. FOR GIVING LOVE, is sometimes how I see it. The quote here: Forgiveness is the only gift you give and would receive. Forgiveness helps us to see beyond the body and into the eternal. The eternal is Love, and so I am only seeing, giving and receiving that Love.
What does this section say to me in my life now?
With my recent illness of bronchitis and my diagnosis earlier in the year of Fibromyalgia, it shows me to see beyond what I am witnessing in my body. Certainly I follow doctor’s instructions, take medications, herbs and supplements as needed, yet too believing this body is not the truth of Who I am. It is carrying me through this world so I may have the experiences I am to have, so I can remember I am my Father’s Child.
That in itself brings me peace.
Namaste,
Rev. Deb
Join us for our email study of The Song of Prayer on our Healing Circle as we open to living in Prayer, Forgiveness and Healing – http://groups.google.com/d/forum/miraclesone-healingcircle
Our Healing Circle meditation each month is for just this. Our meditation recordings are listed here: https://miraclesone.org/2015/07/healing-circle-meditations/
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- False versus True Healing
S-3.II.1. False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a “nicer” one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. 2 This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. 3 Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be free to strike again. 4 False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. 5 But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. 6 The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. 7 And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer [is] answered. 8 Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. 9 It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. 10 It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. 11 And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.
S-3.II.2. This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. 2 We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. 3 But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. 4 Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again.
S-3.II.3. We call it death, but it is liberty. 2 It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. 3 If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. 4 Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. 5 For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own.
S-3.II.4. This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be received with thankfulness. 2 Yet first true healing must have come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world. 3 Now are its dreams dispelled in quiet rest. 4 Now its forgiveness comes to heal the world and it is ready to depart in peace, the journey over and the lessons learned.
S-3.II.5. This is not death according to the world, for death is cruel in its frightened eyes and takes the form of punishment for sin. 2 How could it be a blessing, then? 3 And how could it be welcome when it must be feared? 4 What healing has occurred in such a view of what is merely opening the gate to higher prayer and kindly justice done? 5 Death is reward and not a punishment. 6 But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive. 7 There is no partial healing. 8 What but shifts illusions has done nothing. 9 What is false cannot be partly true. 10 If you are healed your healing is complete. 11 Forgiveness is the only gift you give and would receive.
S-3.II.6. False healing rests upon the body’s cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. 2 It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. 3 Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God’s substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. 4 At last the gate of Heaven opens and God’s Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him.
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