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Mindful Soul Soulful Mind

An Anthology of Mind Body Spirit Writing

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Four Essays on A Course in Miracles ~ Ian Patrick

In Sickness and in Health

Where is your mind? And where is your body? We think our bodies exist in the world and that our minds are located somewhere inside our bodies, specifically in our brains. A Course in Miracles, however, says that everything, including the body, exists in the mind. The body is merely a concept or idea in the mind. Bodies, therefore, do not do anything independently of mind, which is the only creative force. The Course says: 'Sickness is a defense against the truth.' (W 257) Illness stems from body identification. We could say that we are attempting to do with the body what cannot be done: using it to be our identity. This belief is an attack on the truth: that we remain as we were created by God, pure spirit and pure love, like Him. This attack is the symptom of a sick mind, and sick minds produce sick bodies.

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 ... Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more. (W 258)

Sickness tells us that we are a body. The ego uses the sickness that it has deliberately, but unconsciously, made to keep away the truth that threatens it. The preoccupation with symptoms and our attempts to be healed keep our attention fixed on the body and away from our minds – where we could make a different choice.

[Sickness] 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 it ...and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. (W 258)

We think that we are the victims of what the body does to us. We may even believe we deserve to be sick because we are bad and are due punishment. But we have forgotten that we have done all this to ourselves. Forgetting renders our decisions beyond correction.

It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your 'reality' that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control ... Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force ... Defenses must make facts unrecognisable. (W 257)

I acknowledge the presence of this thought in myself. On rare occasions, I have caught the thought of actually wanting to be sick. It is an attack thought; it asserts that I am a victim of the world. It is quite insane.

If we believe that sickness is done to us by our bodies and that, in turn, external agents (viruses, germs, etc.) have done it to our bodies, we will also believe that healing is done for us by external agents (pills, potions, herbs, crystals, doctors, healers, etc.). In truth, if mind is the only creative force, it, too, is the healing agent. Our minds simply invest certain external agents with the power to heal. Like everything else in the physical world, they have no power in themselves. If we want to get well, we will do so. If we want to remain sick, it will be so.

Accepting ourselves as God created us – fully – will be the end of sickness because it will be the end of body identification. When we accept this entirely, healing will be immediate. Until then, we can use each situation involving sickness to remind ourselves of what we have chosen to believe and do to ourselves, so that we can eventually make a better choice. Love, truth and healing are available to us right now and merely wait for our acceptance.

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. (W 257)

Let us bring healing closer by telling ourselves: 'Sickness is a defense against the truth. I will accept the truth of what I am, and let my mind be wholly healed today.' (W 259)

An Olympic Spirit

The 2012 London Olympics was an inspiring experience. Maybe you recall the torch relay, which lasted 70 days, involved about 8,000 people carrying the torch through more than 1,000 communities throughout the UK and brought the Olympics to within 10 miles of 95 per cent of the nation's population. The intention was to get schoolchildren, celebrities and local people involved – able-bodied and disabled, young and old, famous and obscure, heroes and doers of good works. I was struck by the excitement and enthusiasm of the crowds lining the pavements or running along with the torch, seemingly every step of the way. It seemed that everyone wanted to take part, feel involved and be a part of something huge.

The games themselves were a celebration that appeared to be bigger than any athlete, team or sport. It was a national and global coming together, on a massive scale. Even those who were not normally interested in sport found themselves caught up in the fervour.

I was lucky enough to attend three events, plus a rehearsal of the surprisingly dramatic and moving Opening Ceremony in the stadium. There was a palpable feeling of community and a breakdown of social, cultural and ethnic divisions.

I think this desire to feel connected and a part of something beyond our little selves goes way beyond being connected to other bodies, though this is the way it seems in the physical world of time and space. I think it shows that, in our minds, we have an inherent longing for what appears to have been lost, but which also suggests that deep in our unconscious we recognise that we are, and remain, connected.

Listen – perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you. (T 446-7)

This is the 'Forgotten Song' in A Course in Miracles. It speaks of our memory of Home, our inheritance, that we have so nearly, but not quite, forgotten. We long, on some level, to return. Yet, merely having that memory shows us the reality of Home and that the connection is not entirely lost.

The world we have made, and got virtually lost in, is a big distraction, a sideshow that we mistakenly believe is the main event. We are so attracted by the sideshow, desperate to hold on to it, attached to it, fearful of letting go and, yet, being pulled inexorably back to that place we remember and have truly never left.

That Home is so much lovelier than anything here or that we can imagine – more comfortable than the most comfortable home, more blissful than the most perfect holiday, more loving than the most beautiful relationship, more exciting than the most spectacular event that this world can offer.

Yet you have kept [the notes of the song] with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you remembered how dear it was to you. You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then. And yet you know that nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as this. Listen, and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since. (T 447)

I think this is what the Olympic spirit hints at and truly is about if you look beneath the glittery surface of crowds, torches, competitors and medals.

Freedom to Choose

While on a short holiday to Poland, I took a tour to Auschwitz (Oswieçim) extermination camp. It was a powerful experience, but not what I expected. I expected it to be emotional, but I found I was more emotional on the bus on the way there than when we arrived. Once there, I felt more numb than anything. Apart from my gasps in the museum at the sight of piles of shoes, suitcases and human hair, and gas chambers, it was difficult to grasp the scale of the unspeakable horrors perpetrated there – especially the extermination of an estimated 1.3 million people at that one site alone.

I was reminded, though, of Viktor Frankl and his book, Man's Search for Meaning, first published in 1946. Frankl was a Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist who, with his wife (who was exterminated immediately), was interred in Auschwitz and other camps. Using his professional expertise he observed how his fellow prisoners coped with such levels of horror, hardship, deprivation and depravity. Through this lens, he made a profound assessment of the human condition, of human nature as he had experienced it at its most threatened and bewildered.

Foreshadowing one of the major principles of A Course in Miracles, he realised that individual responsibility was paramount in any situation, writing that: 'Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.'

He found that he and others were able to survive better, even thrive, in these extreme circumstances by 'holding' to love. He wrote:

A man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss ... In such a position man can, through loving contemplation achieve fulfilment. In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. [People are able to] retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom.

He concluded that acceptance of a person's life conditions, whatever they are – 'the way he takes up his cross', as he put it – provides an opportunity to add a deeper meaning to his life. If Frankl and others could achieve inner peace, even bliss and fulfilment, in Auschwitz, can we not do the same in much less extreme circumstances?

Jesus, similarly, in the Course reminds us that he offered us his own 'extreme example' (T 92): his loving, forgiving response to his own crucifixion. 'I elected for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter.' They matter only: 'As the world judges these things, but not as God knows them.' (T 93)

A Course in Miracles says that success in life is independent of material comfort, possessions or health but is, ultimately, about attitude – our ability to decide to learn and grow from life's lessons.

The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. You can decide to see it right. (T 231)

This section of the Course goes on to say that:

What you made of it is not its reality, for its reality is only what you give it. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything but love from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is because you have looked within and thought you saw the power to give something else within yourself. (T 231-2)

We choose absolutely our experience in this world. We choose it and project it out, thereby seeing cause outside our minds. In reality, there is only love (or a call for love). If we choose anything else, we are mistaken and delusional, but correction is always ours and we can 'choose once again if [we] would take [our] place among the saviors of the world' (T 666). Both Jesus and Viktor Frankl demonstrated that we are victims only by choice.

This extreme, radical and far-reaching teaching speaks of what lies at the heart of our experience in this world and at the heart of our salvation.

Forgiveness, Projection and Hot Coal

Perhaps the biggest gift I have received from A Course in Miracles is an understanding of and a means for practising forgiveness. I have found that, practised as often as the need arises (which is quite often!), forgiveness brings not just an easing of the issue with another person and peace of mind but also a profound, step-by-step healing of my negative beliefs and conditioning (what ACIM calls 'guilt').

I have learned that 'true' forgiveness is a radical concept, going far beyond what is normally signified by the word. To the world, forgiveness is a noble but slightly soft option. If we are feeling kind and generous we may let someone whom we feel has wronged us 'off the hook'. In so doing, we might feel that we have done ourselves a disservice or not been strong enough; we might have been truer to ourselves if we had stood our ground and maintained a righteous indignation.

I remember one of the first A Course in Miracles groups I attended, when the penny suddenly dropped. 'Oh, I get it!' I exclaimed. 'Forgiveness is for my benefit.'

It is important to remember that in forgiveness we are not condoning behaviour. We are not saying that acts of abuse, corruption, violence, etc. are okay, but we are saying that we do not want to carry around in our own minds thoughts of condemnation, grievance, anger and hatred that only hurt ourselves.

Holding a grievance is, as Buddhists say, like holding a hot coal in our hands to throw at someone. We get burned. Or it is like drinking poison, hoping the other person will die!

Our issues and grievances with others come about because of what psychologists call projection. Early life experiences compound the ego's guilt and we take on negative beliefs about ourselves. This conditioning results in pain that we try to get rid of in the following ways:

1. By seeking to get our psychological needs met.

2. Through addictions.

3. By projecting them onto others. On the mind level, we project what we believe about ourselves and do not like, deny, do not want to look at or disown.

We have a negative emotional reaction to others' behaviour because we have seen in them what we secretly believe and do not like about ourselves. There is the old saying: 'If you spot it [in another], you got it'! This explains why in any given circumstance some people will get an emotional reaction and others will not. It is because the reaction was not caused by the situation, but by the meaning individuals have projected onto it.

The Course says that the pain we think was caused to us by another was, in fact, caused by us – by the meaning we have projected onto the behaviour, or the situation.

What forgiveness does is to take back that projection, recognise that regardless of what the other person may have done, in truth, they are pure spirit, innocent and whole, and remain as they were created by God. Once we have taken back that projection, we are free to see their innocence, that they did not cause us pain, and that what we think it means about them was made up by us.

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Excerpted from Mindful Soul Soulful Mind by Trevor Greenfield. Copyright © 2016 Trevor Greenfield. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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