MY HEALING THROUGH WORKBOOK LESSON 136
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MY HEALING THROUGH LESSON 136: Sickness Is A Defense Against The Truth
For me, among the most confusing and difficult to understand lessons from the workbook of A Course In Miracles, has been any lesson dealing with the word “defense.” And so, Lessons 135 and 136 were particularly tough for me to grasp. Lesson 135 states: “If I defend myself, I am attacked.” Initially, the way I understood the word “defense” as the world used it, implied we should do nothing to defend ourselves if attacked. This was disturbing. Are we to not defend ourselves if faced with a physical threat, such as deflecting a punch or fatal stabbing? Are we to just lie there and let someone murder us? What does the Course mean by defense, sickness, and attack?
I had a feeling I didn’t understand what these words meant at all.
It turns out, just like many of the terms used in the Course, certain words have a different meaning than the one assigned by the world.
Defenses = Any plans you make out of concern for the body. Such concerns imply that you believe you are a body, and not an eternal being of love and light. It is alright to take care of your body, and meet its physical needs, but when such care turns to a negative feeling such as worry, obsession or concern, you are identifying with the body and thus identifying with the ego and not the Holy Spirit within yourself. Any time “body thoughts” rule your mind, you are “defending the body” as your identity and thus denying your true Self.
Here, as used by the Course, the word “defense” has nothing to do with physical protection of the body, but rather, the relinquishment of our belief our physical identity is who we are.
Lesson 135 states: “A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own.”
Defenselessness = Bodilessness. It is the belief you are not a body and therefore you do not make any plans for the body not directed by God. Such plans contain no fear, anxiety, or discomfort. They come from a relaxed state of mind, healthy and whole in the knowing the body is not who you are in Truth.
Again, lesson 135 says, “If I defend myself I am attacked.” This can also be stated as, “If I identify with my false identity as a body, I attack my true identity as an eternal mind at one with God.”
So, what happens when we cease to defend ourself against the truth of Who we are – the being we are without our bodies? The body heals, but only because our mind healed first, and brought our body into alignment with it.
What follows is a brief story of a physical healing that took place in my own body, through healing my mental state through forgiveness – or letting go of defenses – or ceasing all my “Self-defense.” I will first give a quick summary of what happened to me, then integrate it with lesson 136 as taught by the Course to clarify exactly how my healing occurred.
In the spring of 2021, I was beginning to experience some pain in my right elbow. It was progressively getting worse over the course of a few weeks, and I knew it was related to my repetitive motions at work.
By that winter, the pain was chronic, but still tolerable, until I picked up a pitchfork at home to move some hay for my horses. This extra heavy burden was apparently all my elbow could take. Pain shot down through my arm, and I dropped the pitchfork and hit the ground, writhing in agony.
I found that I couldn’t even make a fist, the pain was so intense. Over the next few weeks, I tried everything to ease my discomfort, but nothing seemed to help at all; the pain was relentless.
During this time, I also tried to apply the principles of A Course In Miracles to my physical healing. I tried what I thought was forgiveness; telling myself repeatedly I was not a body, this pain isn’t real, I am a Son of God, not this body and so on and so forth. All without any results.
Then after about 3 months of painful suffering, I was on a walk with my dog Freya. I was thinking about my arm pain and how long I’d been suffering. I wondered how long it would be before it was healed. Would ever heal? Then it occurred to me, I might be stuck like this for the rest of my life! What if that was the case?
I realized I needed to find a way to accept this situation because I couldn’t live with the struggle against my pain for the rest of my life. I wanted peace, and this pain was intruding on all my waking thoughts.
So, I decided to have a conversation with my body, my arm in particular.
In an effort to “make peace with my body,” I said to myself, “Well arm, it’s no wonder you’re in the shape you’re in. I’ve used you without thinking, for repetitive work for years. What did I expect? That my body would last forever? Dear body, I don’t hold you responsible for my pain, my pain is my own. I take full responsibility for it and my experience of it. It is mine to carry, and I now carry it proudly and without complaint. I fully accept whatever my future holds regarding my body, for if I am perceiving pain, then it is something I am doing to myself – for what I see is my responsibility. I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself, but I fully accept it as mine. I absolve my body of all guilt.”
With this shift in perspective, I instantly felt an inner, emotional shift into peaceful acceptance. My mind rested in peace, knowing I’d done all I could, and let go of all outcomes. All I had done, was ceased to wish things were different. At that time, nothing had apparently changed outwardly with my elbow, but I most certainly felt an inner shift. I felt the peace of having no expectations for what the outcome would be.
The next morning, I awoke to a healing miracle.
As I’d done for the past few months upon awaking, I’d first bend my elbow very carefully, because my pain was usually a shock and I liked to ease into it in the morning.
This morning however, when I bent my elbow, there was no pain. I sat up and moved my arm in all sorts of ways – and no pain! It was completely healed! I’m not talking about just feeling a lot better but feeling completely pain free! It was as if my elbow had never hurt at all. There was no “improvement period.” The healing was complete, instant, and total.
I thought back to my inner conversation I’d had the afternoon before with my body. I realized I’d applied the same principle of forgiveness as with other moments of “instant healing” in my life. I’d let go of ego-thoughts; those thoughts that wanted to control the situation. Those thoughts about the world that “wished things were somehow different.” Thoughts I had been using to defend myself against the truth of my being.
And now I will explain step-by-step exactly how this healing took place, using Workbook lesson 136: Sickness is a defense against the truth.
“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 that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear.”
(Once I realized my pain was caused through my own thoughts, and that I did not know why I was doing this to myself, my pain became purposeless. It had no meaning to me. I did not know why I was causing this in myself, and since it had no meaning, it ceased to be at all. Healing became automatic once the illusion was called out.)
“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.”
(I was unaware that I was using my pain to deceive myself into believing I was a body. I was using it to hide the truth of my eternal and pain-free reality as spirit. I was using it to distort the image I held of myself in my mind. All I could think, was “I am a body feeling this pain. No one else feels this. I am separate from everyone else, and not part of a greater whole.” And so the pain consumed my mind, defending the body as my identity with its loud voice.)
“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.”
(I thought my pain was unintentional. Who would consciously choose to feel pain? But in truth, my ego felt threatened by my shifting belief that I was a being who was not a body. The ego then, had to act quickly to insert its judgement to keep the truth hidden from my mind. So quick, that my choice to be a body seemed to be automatic and there seemed to be no time to decide otherwise. Pain is the most useful tool when quick deceit is needed by the ego. Nothing gets our attention faster than when we feel pain. So rejoice when you feel pain, the ego must feel threatened enough by your spiritual progress to put up such harsh defenses against the truth of Who you are.)
“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 yourself.”
(My ego felt threatened by my inner progress and responded so quickly I did not realize what was happening. It felt a threat to its reality because my belief in it was beginning to disappear and so, it set up a situation where I would not question its reality – it created pain so that I would not cease believing I was a body. This happened so fast, I forgot my own participation in this choice, and so it seemed that my pain happened without my consent. It seemed, my pain was external to me and separated from my own choice, and not one I had willingly made myself.)
“It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” that 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 remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. Mistake not this for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and it is this they do.”
(I had forgotten my own participation in the choice to cause myself pain so that I would not forget the ego. The pain was my ego’s clever defense to obscure the truth of my true Self, which is eternally healed, whole and pain free. Pain was the ego’s defense, its grand distraction, against this truth.)
“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 that imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and 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.”
(All defenses of the ego attempt to make us feel separate. Pain is very useful for this because we feel isolated when we are in pain. Our ego tells us one else is feeling what we feel. And so, our awareness of wholeness disappears.)
“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.”
(Each time we learn a new, deeper aspect of truth, you can expect the ego to challenge you in some way. Something in your life may be disrupted in order to bring you back into the fear of the ego. The ego wants to cause your world to become unstable so that you remain focused on external problems, for the ego does not want you to look within. It does not want you to let go of it and embrace the truth of Who You Are instead. Pain is one of the loudest voices it can use.)
“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 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.”
(Again, pain is the loudest voice the ego has to offer, to obscure the truth from your mind and ensure you remain forever focused on it.)
“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, Heaven 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.”
(It seems we cannot escape our pain, and so the ego and its body appear to be more powerful than even God Himself.)
“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 slave 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?”
(And so it is, the ego defends itself against the truth of Who You Are. We are slaves to it and what our bodies seem to go through, and yet, we are the ones who are making it all up. Who else is directing the body but ourselves? And who else has the power to choose otherwise?)
“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.”
(And all this time, God goes on in total Union with you, unaware of your struggle against Him. Heaven is not affected by the petty wishes of the ego to be separate from the Whole through pain and suffering. What is eternally as One, cannot separate.)
“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 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 God wills for you must be received.”
(The truth of Who You Are does not try to control you. It simply is. You are. God is. The truth simply awaits your glad acceptance with patience and love, knowing God’s Will can only be delayed, but never overturned.)
“It is this fact that demonstrates that time is an illusion. For time 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 He wills is here, and you remain as He created you.”
(That accepting your pain-free state of happiness must take time to achieve, is yet another ego delay tactic. Another way it defends its reality. All ego promises are set off somewhere in the future, to tantalize you into continuing on your journey hand in hand with it. In truth, you remain as God created you, and will be so for all eternity.)
“Truth has a 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; today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.”
(Once we allow truth to enter by calling out the ego’s bluff, the truth will shine away all that would deceive us and our defenses against the truth will come down. This can be embraced at any time, and now is always the best time.)
“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.”
(Whenever you find yourself in pain, you can invite the truth simply by reminding yourself that pain is the evidence of your own ego-defensiveness against Who You Are in God, in truth. Then tell yourself you would like to accept the truth of Who You Are, and let your mind be healed.)
“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.”
(You will feel peace in your mind, despite any residual bodily pain once you give up the ego’s defenses. You will no longer be tricked into believing you are a body and will feel the futility of continuing down the long hard road of pain. You will let go of control over what you feel you have no control over.)
“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.”
(The body will follow suit and be healed as your mind is healed. And when this happens, the body will not feel anything, for you will know it is not anything! It will not feel good or bad. All your joy will be in your heart and mind alone, where your true Self abides. The body will become a thing to be observed, as much as you observe when you are in a car or chair. A place you seem to be, but the place is not you. The body will be merely a location for your awareness and that is all.)
“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.”
(Now that you are the observer within the body, and not the body itself, the body is now protected against all of the ego’s oppression. It now no longer has to struggle against the truth of what it is – a vehicle to carry your awareness around the illusion of separation until you are finished bringing healing into this world.)
“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.”
(To maintain the truth in the forefront of your mind, you need to now watch your thoughts. Become aware at all times of when you are letting your ego rule and when you are listening to God. All negative, fear-based thoughts or thoughts that place concerns of the body at the center of your focus will take you down the wrong path. Such thoughts are ego defense mechanisms. Such thoughts are an attack on your true Self.)
“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 cannot be sick.”
(And with this thought, fully understood and fully believed, are all things healed. First within your mind as your belief in your bodily identity is cured, and then physical healing as your body comes into alignment with your now healed mind. Your mind is at peace, and so must your physical body move into a new peaceful, pain-free state).
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