We are so obsessed with trusting what our five senses tell us is reality. We seek physical proof before  we’re willing to change our mind about the seeming conflict or problem. Through the ego we think we need to ‘see’ it before we will believe it; we want physical proof.

This is insane and typical of the ego thought system. Think about this. Everything we appear to see, including our bodies, is in our mind. There is no ‘out there’. Because it’s all in here, in the mind. The cause of the world and everyone in it arises inside our mind. None of it could possibly occur unless we agreed to birth it in our mind. So we are the originators of all we see. We either project from the ego or we extend with Spirit. The world we experience is dictated by which inner teacher we choose to see it with; either the ego or Spirit; fear or Love.

When we’re experiencing pain, sickness, financial scarcity, relationship conflict, etc., where do we look for help and healing first? For sickness and pain, we look ‘outside’ for magical remedies. For financial scarcity, we look ‘outside’ for relief, for abundance. For relationship conflict, we look to the ‘other’ for change or relief. We want them to meet our needs so we can be happy.

But real and consistent healing can only come from addressing the fundamental cause of it all; our mind. One simple rule that I am learning to apply every time I feel pain, fear or conflict is this: “If I feel it then it must come from my own mind.” To the degree it upsets me signifies the extent to which my inner ‘guilt gauge’ is triggered. And there is one single reason for it. It’s been raised to conscious awareness (albeit it in disguised form) so it can be forgiven and released. My negative reaction is always my own ‘self-attack’. Nevertheless this trigger is a gift whereby I’m given the opportunity to offload yet another chunk of guilt. There is absolutely no compromise here.

Let’s get straight about this. I know I have said this time and time again however it requires much repetition in order to disentangle us from the ego’s frame of reference. This teaching will not work if we compromise Jesus’ message through attempts to mingle ego illusion with Spirit’s Reality. Illusions are illusions. Truth is truth and only truth is true. They are diametrically opposed and are therefore mutually exclusive.

If everything we perceive originates and stays in our mind, then both the cause (mind) and its effects (the body and world) are always in our mind. At no time are they separate nor can they be. This is what Jesus means when he repeats often in the Course that, “ideas leave not their source.”

“To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.” W-132.10:2-3

Getting back to the earlier statement about how when we feel challenged regardless of the nature of the problem, we seek physical proof of help or healing. Through the ego we will believe it when we see it. We look ‘out there’ for evidence of the solution. And we doubt healing until we do ‘see’ it with the body’s eyes or hear it with the body’s ears. Yet the cause of every problem we see ‘out there’ is in our own mind. If you are triggered by bad news about starving animals on TV, then your emotional reaction immediately points to the one and only cause of all pain and scarcity – unconscious guilt. That is the one cause.

There is one mind. When we leap to remedying the one cause of suffering through forgiveness and accepting Atonement then we invoke miracles. (For the forgiveness, Atonement process, click here.) If I wholeheartedly accept Atonement for my reaction to these starving animals, then my forgiveness of my own guilt will heal my mind while being instrumental in healing these animals along with the conditions that caused such neglect. I don’t even need to lift a physical finger unless I am guided to. Cause and effect are both in my mind. When I sincerely heal the cause, the effect must fall into alignment because cause and effect are never separate, ever.

If I am demanding physical proof of change or healing then I’ve fallen for the ego’s trick. I must then believe what the ego is projecting. I think it’s real. Now I’m lost because I cannot forgive what I still believe is real.

Remember this. This is extremely important to integrate if we truly wish to join in undoing the ego and invoking the miraculous ‘reality-reversal’ that Spirit calls us to. The ego sends our physical senses out there to report back exactly what ‘it’ wants us to find. Disease, aging, pain, scarcity, conflict and death, etc. Every single thing we seem to see outside us that upsets us, is projected by the ego, by guilt.

“Spirit, show me, teach me, guide me.”

Whatever the problem, in order to heal the one cause, we must withdraw our dependence on the need for physical evidence to tell us what reality is. How in the world can problems (effects) be healed permanently when their solitary cause (unforgiveness) remains to repeat its attacks in different forms over and over again?

Miracles occur as we learn to withdraw our dependence on physical evidence to tell us what reality is. With Spirit, we look past appearances and genuinely seek to join in Love’s perfection beneath the ego’s appearance. Thus do we ‘forgive’ it by choosing to replace what the ego sent our physical senses to find…with Spirit’s perception. Our perception is healed as we reverse the ego’s teaching. No longer is it, “I will believe it when I see it.” Through our Holy Self it becomes, “I will see it when I believe it!”

 ***

Jesus tells us that we believe there is an order of difficulty in miracles only because there are some things that we’d rather hold apart from Spirit’s Love. We don’t trust Love to heal all. Instead we would rather retain our own hierarchy of illusions, splitting off aspects of reality according to the ego’s insanity. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. But we don’t manifest this in every area of our lives because deep down we are terrified of our own Power in God.

A headache, emotional trauma, a cold, the last stage of cancer and the throes of death itself are all the same mistake. No hierarchy of illusions. If we really embodied this teaching then we would ‘know’ and therefore demonstrate as Jesus did, that “there is no order of difficulty in miracles.” One is not harder or bigger than another. Heal the fundamental cause (guilt) and the effect, a cold or the throes of death, can be healed equally. This is what Jesus came to teach. First in person and then two thousand years later, through A Course in Miracles.

We separate reality. Even after twenty years of studying the Course, I still compartmentalized reality. Physical matter, the level of form, was meaningless or so I was taught. Little did I know back then that mind and matter were joined and could not be separated. Though now I know differently, not by intellectual means but through experiencing the miracle over and over. As I have repeated, cause and effect remain united in our mind. And there cannot possibly be a hierarchy of illusions (in form) that is immune to the Power of the miracle…unless we so believe.

Matter resides in our mind and is not where it appears, out there. Anything and anyone can be healed by the miracle provided we recognize this, “The lesson is the [mind] was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.” T-28.II.11:7

I have said this before but it deserves repeating. We unconsciously idolize this ego-world. Even as dedicated students of Truth, we still idolize ‘matter’ being the world of form. The Spiritual ego unknowingly separates ‘form’ from ‘Spirit’. We make form special by separating it from Spirit. We unknowingly romance this special and exclusive relationship we have with matter by divorcing it from its origin, in our minds. Jesus clearly taught and teaches that if the cause is healed (forgiven) then the effect must follow. Otherwise cause and effect would be separate and this is an impossibility.

Through the ego we may accept the miracle provided it doesn’t transfer to heal at the form level; the body and world. Because if it did, it would threaten our entire world view. Our world’s fundamental frame of reference would crumble and disintegrate. It would destroy the ego’s paradigm. And we would see that we are and never were, helpless or hopeless. In fact we would have to accept our monumental Power in God and doing so would indeed cost us the entire world as we appear to see it now.

The miracle is given us to free us from the ego’s laws. Form or matter is illusion but we won’t truly know this until we develop trust in the miracle to undo these illusions that we made to attack ourselves and to separate from Love. “How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo!” And this is exactly what Jesus tells us in the Course:  

“How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo! The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths. And they attest to different sufferings. Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the throes of death itself are but a single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. It is their sameness that the miracle attests. It is their sameness that it proves. The laws that call them different are dissolved, and shown as powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God Himself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for what they witness to.” T-27.VI.6:3-11

“The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of causation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is no cause. Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made.” T-28.II.11:1-4

“Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him Who knows the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. Salvation from separation would be complete, or will not be at all. Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it; not you. But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it.” T-17.I.6.

Amen! With Love…

Recommended Blogs:
The 7 Keys to Authentic Communication
The Seven Essential Principles of Quantum Forgiveness
Powerful Forgiveness Process – The Atonement