ARCIM

Daily Lesson 136 ~
May 16

Sickness is an attempted defense against the Truth.

Whoever would heal must understand what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then they understand as well that 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. Seeing dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all illusions to Truth to disappear.

Sickness is not by chance or accident. Like all attempted ego defenses, it is a deranged 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 attempted defenses is to keep the Truth from being Whole. And the parts thus rendered in the mind of the defender are looked upon as if each one were entire within itself, but fragmented each from the other.

Attempted defenses are intentional, and are made with awareness even if that awareness isn’t conscious. They are secret enchantment wands waved when Truth appears to threaten what a person would believe. They seem to be unconscious only because of the rapidity with which the choice is made to use them. In that moment, even less, in which the choice is made, the person recognizes exactly what they are attempting to do, and they then proceed to think that it is done.

Who but yourself judges a threat, decides protection or escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? This cannot be done without awareness. But afterward the ego’s plan requires that you must forget your decision, so that the result 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 yourself. It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making the “reality” of your experiences that makes attempted defenses seem to be beyond your own control.

But what you chose to forget you can also choose to remember, given willingness to reconsider the decision that is doubly shielded by oblivion. Your inability to remember your decision to choose sickness is only the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. Mistake this not as proof of fact that sickness came from outside of you. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and this they seem to do.

Every attempted defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a wholeness that is not there. In fact the world of time and space was brought into existence through this very process. It is this process that actually imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. When parts are wrested from the whole and perceived as separate and as entireties within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the true Whole, and believed to be successful in effect, and never to be found as whole again. And yet you have forgotten that these symbols stand only for your own decision of what you want to 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 the deluded part of your mind, and all your world appears to totter and to prepare to fall. Now do you appear to be sick so 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 separate from the Truth.

You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with the body. Thus the false identity that you believe is true is preserved, and the strange, haunting thought silenced and stilled that you might be something beyond this little compilation of dust and water animated for a time. For look, this compilation of dust and water can make you suffer as its limbs twist and heart stops, commanding you to die and seem to cease to be.

Thus does the body appear to be stronger than the Truth, which asks that you live but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body becomes for you more powerful than everlasting Life, Heaven more frail than the nightmare of separation, and the Divine’s Plan for the awakening of Its Children opposed by a decision stronger than Its Will. Its Children are proved to be mere compilations of dust and water animated for a time, their Creator incomplete, and chaos seated in triumph on the Divine’s Altar.

Such are the “logical” results of your planning for your own defense in forms such as sickness. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with the Divine made blind by your illusions, Truth turned into lies, and all the Universe imprisoned by laws that your defenses would impose on It. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can perceive them and react to them as if they were the truth?

The Divine knows not of your plans to change Its Will. Its 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 only choose to think you suffer sickness, or die, or distort the Truth in any way. What is created Eternal is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is Unalterable cannot change. What is wholly Innocent cannot sin. And what is Invulnerable cannot be threatened in any way.

Such is the simple Truth. It does not make appeal to might or triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile are your attempts to plan defenses that 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 the Divine wills for you must be received. It is this Fact that demonstrates that time is an illusion. For time lets you think that what the Divine has given you is not the Truth right now, as It must be.

The Thoughts of the Divine are quite apart from time. For time as you made it is only another meaningless attempted defense against the Truth. Yet what the Divine wills is here, and you remain as It created you. Truth has Power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where Truth 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. It is found today, as you choose to practice giving welcome to the Truth.

This is our aim today. And we will give a quarter of an hour twice today 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 that we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer to help us rise above defensiveness, and let the Truth be as It has always been:

 

“Sickness is an attempted defense against the Truth.

I will accept the Truth of Who 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 conflict and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners in your mind that sickness can conceal and keep defended from the Light of Truth. There will be no dim figures remaining from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes senselessly sought. Your mind will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to compel 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: your mind should be free of feeling itself confined to your body. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all will be in the mind to what the body does. The body’s usefulness remains, and nothing more.

Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you have 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 the elements 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 in your mind.

Yet this Protection needs to be invited and welcomed throughout the day through your mindfulness. If you let your mind harbor fear thoughts, yield to judgment, or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced your trust and understanding of yourself, and made a bodily identity that will undermine the body, for the mind will again be 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 forgot Who I really am,

for I mistook my body for myself.

Sickness is an attempted defense against the Truth.

But my holy Self is not a body,

and my mind cannot attack,

so in truth I cannot be sick.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 11: The Dissolution of the Ego

 

6. The “Dynamics” of the Ego

We are ready to examine more closely the ego’s thought system, because together we have the Lamp that will dispel it. And since you realize that you don’t want this thought system, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely honestly seeking for Truth. The “dynamics” of the ego will be our focus for a while, for we must first understand this to see beyond it, since you have made it real for yourself. We will undo this error gently together, and then see beyond it to Truth.

No one can release themself from illusions through perceiving with the body’s eyes alone, for that way of perceiving is the way illusions are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. What is healing but the removal of all that obscures and stands as a block to Knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions except by perceiving them clearly, without protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for while what you will be perceiving is the source of all fear, you have surely learned by now that fear is not real. We have accepted the fact already that fear’s effects can be dispelled merely by denying that they have any reality, which is the appropriate use of denial. The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no real effects does not exist in Reality.

Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and accordingly what leads to nothing has not happened. If Reality is recognized by Its Extension, what extends to nothing cannot be real. Do not be afraid, then, to perceive fear clearly, for, being nothing, it cannot be seen, and by perceiving it clearly you will see this. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to perceive darkness through Light must dispel it.

Let us begin this lesson in “ego dynamics” by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. In fact, it contains exactly the contradiction in terms that makes it meaningless. “Dynamics” implies the power to do something, and the entire separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. The ego has become fearful because you believe this. But the Truth is very simple: all Power is of the Divine, and only of the Divine. What is not of It has no power to do anything that is real.

When we perceive the ego clearly, then, we are not considering actual dynamics, but delusions. We could therefore call this lesson, “The Delusions of the Ego,” for thus they are. We can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects that threaten if its source is not true.

Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if one recognizes the ego’s goal, which is so clearly senseless that any effort exerted on its behalf is necessarily expended on nothing. The ego’s goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. From its beginning, then, its purpose has been and is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power except its own. This is why the ego is the symbol of separation. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural extension of what it is. Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its results, one of which is fear, is merely to recognize that their source is not natural, being out of accord with your true Nature. It is therefore artificial, or a false construct, which, when dismantled, disappears because it only appeared to have substance.

This Course has said that you can wish for the impossible, but you can only will with the Divine. To will contrary to the Divine is wishful thinking, and not real willing. The Divine’s Will is One, because the Extension of Its Will cannot be unlike Itself. The real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego’s idle wishes and the Will of the Divine, Whose Will you share. Can this be an actual conflict?

Yours is the Independence of creating, not of ego autonomy. Your whole creative Function is in your complete Dependence on the Divine, Whose Function It shares with you. By Its Willingness to share Its Function, the Divine becomes as dependent on you as you are on It. Do not ascribe the ego’s arrogance to the Divine, Who wills to be joined with you, and never independent of you. It has included you in Its Autonomy. Can you believe that autonomy is meaningful apart from the Divine?

The belief in ego autonomy is costing you the knowing of your Dependence on the Divine, in which your Freedom is. The ego aspect of the split mind conceives all dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for the Divine into a means of establishing itself. But do not be deceived by its interpretation of the basic conflict between fear and Love. The ego’s aggression is always on behalf of separation. Believing it has the power to separate, it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy is nothing else. Though the ego is totally confused about Reality, it does not lose sight of its goal. It is much more vigilant toward its goal of separation than many have been toward awakening, because it is completely certain of its purpose. Whenever you feel confused it is because you have forgotten your Purpose.

You must learn to recognize that the last thing the ego wishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it. For if you realize that the ego gives rise to fear, then you will also realize that it is diminishing your Independence and weakening your Power. Yet its one claim to your allegiance is that it can give power to you. Without this belief you would not listen to it at all. How, then, can the ego’s existence in your mind continue if you realize that by accepting it you are belittling yourself, and depriving yourself of Power?

The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as condescending, unbelieving, dismissive, distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved, and even desperate, but not really afraid. Minimizing but not allowing fear to be undone is the ego’s constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. How can it witness for separation without upholding it through fear, but would you listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?

The basic threat to the ego therefore has two parts. First is your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from the Divine, regardless of the form it takes, is only fear and not independence. Second is the realization that this true understanding of fear is quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience fear. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by your awareness of the actual cost of fear, which is separation from Reality rather than fulfillment of some vague idea of independence. For though you have been willing to live with a vague idea of independence, you will not accept the actual cost of fear if you recognize it. Yet fear is the cost of the false idea of independence, and the ego cannot minimize this cost when it is clearly seen.

Fear cultivated but minimized by the ego has had the effect of causing you to avoid seeing Love and to avoid seeing through (not being deceived by) the ego. If you do not see Love, you are not perceiving yourself truly, and you must then fear unreality because you have denied yourself. Your choice is therefore either to fear unreality or to see the unreality of fear. When seen in these terms the simplicity of the choice is evident, and this clarity is the basic threat to the ego’s continued existence in your mind.

If the ego’s goal of autonomy could be accomplished, then the Divine’s Purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. Only by perceiving fear and its cost as these truly are can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible, and the true from the false. According to the ego’s teaching, its goal can be accomplished, and the Divine’s Purpose cannot. According to the Holy Spirit’s Teaching, because the ego doesn’t exist, its goal and this goal’s accomplishment are meaningless, while the Divine’s Purpose is Accomplishment, and is already Complete.

The Divine is as dependent on you as you are on It because Its Autonomy encompasses yours, and is therefore incomplete without it. You can only establish your true creative Independence by identifying with the Divine and fulfilling your Function as It exists in Truth. The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. But it is given you to know that the Divine’s Function of Creation is yours, and Happiness cannot be found apart from your joint Will.

Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued quite diligently, has merely brought you fear, however unrecognized this fear has been, and you will also recognize the difficulty of maintaining that fear is happiness. Upheld by fear, the ego would have you believe that fear is happiness. Yet the Divine’s Children in their right mind are not insane, and cannot truly believe this. Let them simply recognize the meaning of this idea, and they will not accept it. For only the insane would choose fear in place of Love, and only the insane could believe that Love can be gained by denying It. But the Sane know that only the denial of Reality could produce fear, from which the Love of the Divine completely protects them.