ARCIM

Daily Lesson 137 ~
May 17

When I am healed, I am joined in my healing.

Today’s idea remains the central thought on which awakening rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas that dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.

Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep oneself apart from all the rest, to suffer what others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation seem real and keep the mind in a kind of solitary confinement, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of disjointed parts that it cannot surmount.

The world obeys the “laws” that sickness serves, but healing operates in accordance with quite other Laws. For instance, it is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must a person be apart and separate, for that is its purpose. But healing is their own decision to be joined again, and to accept their holy Self with all Its Parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does their Self appear to be dismembered and without the Unity that gives It Life. But healing is accomplished as one sees that the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of the Divine’s Children.

Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that what is true is true and what is false is false, which also means that what is true cannot be made false, and what is false cannot be made true. This Law clarifies why awakening is inevitable for all the separated ones, and why this world has never existed in Reality.

The separation sickness would impose and uphold has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple Truth, and always will remain exactly as It has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the Truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

Healing might thus be called a counter-dream – a happy dream that is the Gift of Spirit – that in the Name of Truth, but not in Truth Itself, cancels out or dispels the sad dream of sickness. Just as forgiveness sees beyond all “unforgivable” errors that have no effects in reality, healing simply removes illusions that have not occurred in truth. Just as the blessed real world arises, when its conditions are met, to take the place of the world of illusions that has never been at all, healing offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas that dreams embroider into pictures of another “real world”—the hard “reality” of the ego and its hurt projected onto all things.

Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here because it addresses unrealities. For what is opposite of Innocence, be it condemnation or guilt, becomes more powerful than Divine Essence to those who dream that the world of illusions is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream or fantasy, while fear remains the one reality that can be perceived and justified and fully understood.

Just as forgiveness shines away all belief in separation and sin, and the Real World will gladly take the place of what you made, so healing must replace the feverish dream of sickness that you hold before the simple Truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the “laws” that maintain it must be real, then questions of health have been answered. And the dictates of sickness can no longer be cherished or obeyed.

Healing is Freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the Truth.

Healing is shared, and by this attribute it proves that laws unlike the ones that hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites.

Healing is Strength, for by its gentle hand is weakness overcome and minds that seemed to be walled off within a body are free to join with other minds, to be forever strong.

Forgiveness, healing, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter are the Means by which the Holy Spirit encourages you to follow in Its Way. Its gentle Lessons teach how easily awakening can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let the Laws Spirit reminds you of replace the ones you made to hold yourself a prisoner to weakness and to death. Spirit’s Life becomes your own as you extend the little help It asks in freeing you from everything that ever caused you pain.

And as you let yourself be healed, you see healed along with you all those around you, or whom you touch, or who cross your mind, or those who seem to have no contact with you at all. When you let healing come to you perhaps you will not recognize all those healed with you, or realize how great your offering is to all the world. But you are always joined in your healing. And multitudes will receive the Gift that you receive when you choose healing.

Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the Instant they are healed and all the Grace of healing it is given them to give. What is opposed to the Divine exists only in a dream, and they who move beyond such opposition within their minds become a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is Truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to Truth to be dispelled.

When you offer shelter to the Divine’s Will you invite your holy Self to be at home, and this invitation will be accepted. Ask the Inevitable to occur and It will never fail, and you will always succeed. The only other choice is to ask what cannot be to be, and this cannot succeed. Today we ask that only Truth will occupy our minds, that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

We will remember, as each waking hour strikes, that our function is to let our minds be healed that we may carry healing to the world, replacing judgment with blessing, pain with joy, and separation with the Peace of the Divine. Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving to receive a Gift like this? Is not a little time a small amount to offer for the Gift of Everything?

Yet must we be prepared for such a Gift. And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes as well to these thoughts with which we will conclude this day:

 

“When I am healed I am joined in my healing.

And I would share my healing with the world,

that sickness may be banished from the mind

of the Divine’s Child, Who is my holy Self.”

 

Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in Quiet, you will be prepared to give as you receive, to hold only what you give, and to receive the Word of the Divine to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make whole and well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was condemnation.

Nor will we let this function be forgotten as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our Purpose with this Thought:

 

“When I am healed I am joined in my healing.

And I would bless my sisters and brothers,

for I would be healed with them

as they are healed with me.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 11: The Dissolution of the Ego

 

7. Interpreting the Laws of Perception

The ego analyzes. The Holy Spirit accepts. The appreciation of Wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to separate out. The attempt to understand Totality by breaking It up is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. Always remember that the ego believes that power, understanding, and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must take apart all things, including its host. Unaware that the belief cannot be established in truth, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking everything up into small and disconnected parts that are without meaningful relationships, and thus without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos in place of meaning, for if to the ego separation means salvation, then harmony is threat.

The ego’s interpretations of the laws of perception therefore have to be, and are, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s. The ego in your mind focuses on error, and overlooks Truth. It attempts to make real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that, because of these mistakes, consistent truth must be meaningless. The next step in its reasoning, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true if truth has meaning. Holding error firmly in mind, and protecting what it has made real for itself, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: that error is true, and that to believe there is Truth is error.

The ego makes no attempt to understand this line of reasoning, and it is clearly not understandable. But the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly. Analyzing in order to break apart Meaning, the ego does succeed in overlooking It, and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions that it “unifies” on behalf of itself. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives, and it is this universe that, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.

Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego’s demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses are consistent within its limited framework. The case for insanity is strong to the insane, for reasoning, human as well as Divine, ends at insanity’s beginning, and no thought system escapes the inevitable pull of its source in the eyes of its adherents. Yet reasoning without Meaning cannot demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must be deluded. Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks Truth? Can it perceive what it has denied? The ego’s witnesses do attest to the ego’s skill at denial, but hardly to the denial of Truth. The ego looks straight at the Creator and does not perceive It, for the ego has denied that Its Children exist.

Would you remember the Creator? Accept Its perfect Creation and you will remember It. Nothing can demonstrate that Its Children are unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true except in fantasy and illusion. What you look upon of the Children of the Divine through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that the Creation does not exist, yet where the Creation is, the Creator must be, and the Creation is Everywhere. Accept what the Divine’s Presence confirms, and It will demonstrate Its Truth. The Witnesses for the Divine stand in Its Light and behold what It created. Their holy Silence is the Sign that they have beheld the Divine’s Creation, and in the Presence of Divine Essence they need demonstrate nothing, for Divine Essence speaks to them of Itself and of Its Creator. They are silent because Divine Essence speaks to them, and it is Its Words that they then speak.

Every sister and brother you meet becomes a witness for Divine Essence or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in them. Everyone convinces you of what you want to perceive, and of the reality of the world or Realm you have chosen for your vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to be true. Every sister and brother has the Power to release you from illusions if you will to be free. You cannot accept false witness of your sisters and brothers unless you have evoked false witnesses against them. If they speak not of Divine Essence to you, you spoke not of Divine Essence to them. You hear but your own voice, and if Divine Essence speaks through you, you will hear It.