Healing the Sick: It's not about the Patient

Excerpt from The Disappearance of the Universe, Healing the Sick chapter

- Sickness is of the mind and has nothing to do with the body.

- Sickness has nothing to do with God.

- Only true forgiveness can remove unconscious guilt from the mind.

Pursah: ...Your life is self-determined. Sickness isn't personal. You may find that hard to believe, but sickness is not made by you at this level. That's just another reason why no one should feel bad about it if they get sick. You don't choose cancer on this level any more than a baby chose to be deformed on this level. Illness was made by your mind at a larger level, and is being acted out here in a predetermined way. You can get in touch with your power to choose and thus have an enormous influence on whether or not you feel pain, and sometimes lessen or eliminate your physical symptoms.

I say sometimes because unless you're a master then you won't always be successful, and if you are successful it doesn't necessarily make you a master. Besides, it's the changing of your mind and its result on the way you feel that's the most important thing.

Arten: Remember, we're talking about levels here. We're not saying you're not responsible for your experience or that you didn't choose the script on another level. We're saying you've got to get in touch with your power to choose from where you presently think you are. That's also true when you're healing "others." You never join with their bodies, and you never ask the Holy Spirit to heal the body. The body, sick or well, is just a dream. As the Course teaches you in regards to all aspects of joining with the dreamer of that dream:

...Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it and believe it is.

Now I'm going to give you the number one rule of all time when it comes to spiritual healing:

It's not about the patient.

All healing is a result of some kind of forgiveness, and all forgiveness leads to self-healing.

Gary: ****So even when it comes to healing the sick it's really about forgiving my own dream, and forgiving myself for dreaming it.*****

Arten: Yes. As the Psychotherapy pamphlet puts it while talking about how the Course looks at healing in psychotherapy:

...The process that takes place in this relationship is actually one in which the therapist in his heart tells the patient that all his sins have been forgiven him, along with his own. What could be the difference between healing and forgiveness?

Gary: Okay. So when J told that paralyzed man in the Book of Mark, "Your sins are forgiven you," and the guy got up and walked, J was demonstrating that healing and forgiveness are the same. Of course people freaked out and took it to be J doing something that only God was supposed to be able to do, namely forgiving someone his sins. They missed the point.

Arten: Very good.

Gary: So I should see another person's illness as my own call for help?

Arten: Yes. You have a chance to be healed in your mind by forgiving that person.

Gary: It seems a little selfish to use another person's difficulties as my way to get home.

Arten: It may seem selfish, but it's actually selfless.

Gary: How do you mean that?

Arten: Ultimately, forgiveness is saying that neither you nor the person who appears to be sick really exists separately from God. Thus are you both free. Furthermore, it's the only way for you to be free! It's all right to want freedom, and the way out is to see both of you as guiltless.

Gary: You could say that a great spiritual healer, like Joel Goldsmith for example, must have gotten in touch with the idea that people think they're guilty or unworthy in some way, and that the way to healing is through forgiveness.

Arten: Yes. All spiritual healers may not articulate it the same way, but the holiness that comes from unconditional love and forgiveness is essential. In some cases it triggers something in the unconscious mind of the patient - a recognition that they're really innocent and forgiven by God. Of course the mind of the healer is being healed simultaneously because there is really only one mind. There is no patient. Not really. The dream is not being dreamed by someone else, remember?

Gary: Oh, yeah.

Arten: By the way, J really did heal that man as described in Mark. After he said, "Your sins are forgiven," he also said, "that you may know the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins." He didn't just mean that he had that authority, he meant that you also have that authority. Do you not appear to be a Son of man on this level? Yet you are really Christ.

Of course there really isn't any such thing as sin, and J did not pardon sins to make them real. His attitude was that everyone in the dream is equally innocent because it's just a dream.

Sooner or later, it always comes down to some kind of forgiveness and how willing you are to do it. How willing are you to accept that it's all your dream? How willing are you to release your dream and choose God? You know J plays a little trick on you in the Course. Most of the time he says it takes a little willingness. But that's not for advanced students. In the Manual for Teachers, he says it takes abundant willingness.

Gary: The old bait and switch, huh?

Arten: Whatever it takes to get a lazy guy like you moving. Just kidding.

- You are Christ. Pure and Innocent. We are forgiven now.

What is True Forgiveness? (Article Version)

What is True Forgiveness? (You Tube version)

Mikey's website: www.giddyupmikey.com

Gary's website: www.garyrenard.com

Gary Renard podcast with Gene Bogart: www.forgiveness.tv