No one can heal unless he understands
what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then
he understands as well its purpose has
no meaning. Being causeless and without
a meaningful intent of any kind,
it cannot be at all. When this is seen,
healing is automatic. It dispels
this meaningless illusion by the same
approach which carries all of them to truth,
and merely leaves them there to disappear.
Sickness is not an accident. Like all
defenses, it is an insane device
for self deception. And like all the rest
its purpose is to hide reality,
attack it, change it, render it inept,
distort it, twist it, or reduce it to
a little pile of unassembled parts.
The aim of all defenses is to keep
the truth from being whole. The parts are seen
as if each one were whole within itself.
Defenses are not unintentional,
nor are they made without awareness. They
are secret magic wands you wave when truth
appears to threaten what you would believe.
They seem to be unconscious but because
of the rapidity with which you choose
to use them. In that second, even less,
in which the choice is made, you recognize
exactly what you would attempt to do,
and then proceed to think that it is done.
Who but yourself evaluates a threat,
decides escape is necessary, and
sets up a series of defenses to
reduce the threat that has been judged as real?
All this cannot be done unconsciously.
But afterwards your plan requires that
you must forget you made it, so it seems
to be external to your own intent;
a happening beyond your state of mind,
an outcome with a real effect on you,
instead of one effected by your self. |
It is this quick forgetting of the part
you play in making your "reality"
which makes defenses seem to be beyond
your own control. But what you have forgot
can be remembered, given willingness
to reconsider the decision which
is doubly shielded by oblivion.
Your not remembering is but the sign
that this decision still remain in force,
as far as your desires are concerned.
Mistake this not for fact. Defenses must
make facts unrecognizable. They aim
at doing this, and this they seem to do. |
Every defense takes fragments of the whole,
assembles them without regard to all
their true relationships, and thus constructs
illusions of a whole that is not there.
It is this process which imposes threat,
and not whatever outcome may result.
When parts are wrested from the whole and seen
as separate and as wholes within themselves,
they become symbols standing for attack
upon the whole, successful in effect,
and never to be seen as whole again.
And yet you have forgotten that they stand
but for your own decision of what should
be real, to take the place of what is real. |
Sickness is a decision. It is not
a thing that happens to you quite unsought,
which makes you weak and brings you suffering.
It is a choice you make, a plan you lay
when for an instant truth arises in
your own deluded mind, and all your world
appears to totter and prepare to fall.
Now are you sick that truth may go away,
and threaten your establishments no more. |
How do you think that sickness can succeed
in shielding you from truth? Because it proves
the body is not separate from you,
and so you must be sep'rate from the truth.
You suffer pain because the body does,
and in this pain are you made one with it.
Thus is your "true" identity preserved,
and the strange, haunting thought that you might be
something beyond this little pile of dust
silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make
you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart,
commanding you to die and cease to be.
Thus is the body stronger than the truth,
which asks you live but cannot overcome
your choice to die. And so the body is
more powerful than Everlasting Life,
Heav'n more frail than hell, and God's design
for the salvation of His Son opposed
by a decision stronger than His Will.
His Son is dust, the Father incomplete,
and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.
Such is your planning for your own defense.
And you believe that Heaven quails before
such mad attacks as these, with God made blind
by your illusions, truth turned into lies,
and all the universe made slaves to laws
which your defenses would impose on it.
Yet who believes illusions but the one
who made them up? Who else can see them and
react to them as if they were the truth?
God knows not of your plans to change His Will.
The universe remains unheeding of
the laws by which you thought to govern it.
And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life
to death. You can but choose to think you die,
or suffer sickness or distort the truth
in any way. What is created is
apart from all of this. Defenses are
plans to defeat what cannot be attacked.
What is unalterable cannot change.
And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.
Such is the simple truth. It does not make
appeal to might nor triumph. It does not
command obedience, nor seek to prove
how pitiful and futile your attempts
to plan defenses which would alter it.
Truth merely wants to give you happiness,
for such its purpose is. Perhaps it sighs
a little when you throw away its gifts,
and yet it knows with perfect certainty
that what God wills for you must be received.
It is this fact which demonstrates that time
is an illusion. For it lets you think
what God has given you is not the truth
right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God
are quite apart from time. For time is but
another meaningless defense you made
against the truth. Yet what God wills is here,
and you remain as He created you. |
Truth has a power far beyond defense,
for no illusions can remain where it
has been allowed to enter. And it comes
to any mind that would lay down its arms
and cease to play with folly. It is found
at any time; today, if you will choose
to practice giving welcome to the truth. |
This is our aim today. And we will give
a quarter of an hour twice to ask
the truth to come to us and set us free.
And truth will come, for it has never been
apart from us. It merely waits for just
this invitation which we give today.
We introduce it with a healing prayer
to help us rise above defensiveness,
and let truth be as it has always been:
"
Sickness is a defense against the truth.
I will accept the truth of what I am,
And let my mind be wholly healed today." |
Healing will flash across your open mind
as peace and truth arise to take the place
of war and vain imaginings. There will
be no dark corners sickness can conceal
and keep defended from the light of truth.
There will be no dim figures from your dreams,
nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits
with double purposes insanely sought,
remaining in your mind. It will be healed
of all the sickly wishes that it tried
to authorize the body to obey. |
Now is the body healed because the source
of sickness has been opened to relief.
And you will recognize you practiced well
by this; the body should not feel at all.
If you have been successful, there will be
no sense of feeling ill or feeling well,
of pain or pleasure. No response at all
is in the mind to what the body does.
Its usefulness remains, and nothing more. |
Perhaps you do not realize that this
removes the limits you had placed upon
the body by the purposes you gave
to it. As these are laid aside, the strength
the body has will always be enough
to serve all truly useful purposes.
The body's health is fully guaranteed
because it is not limited by time,
by weather or fatigue, by food and drink,
or any laws you made it serve before.
You need do nothing now to make it well,
for sickness has become impossible. |
Yet this protection needs to be preserved
by careful watching. If you let your mind
harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or
make plans against uncertainties to come,
you have again misplaced yourself, and made
a bodily identity which will
attack the body, for the mind is sick. =
Give instant remedy, should this occur,
by not allowing your defensiveness
to hurt you longer. Do not be confused
about what must be healed, but tell yourself:
"
I have forgotten what I really am,
For I mistook my body for myself.
Sickness is a defense against the truth,
But I am not a body. And my mind
Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."
~ Original Handscript of ACIM
