A conversation between A Course in Miracles and Abraham on sickness/purpose/life
/A Course in Miracles is adamant about where sickness comes from...(lesson 136) [quote]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.
How do you think that sickness can succeed from shielding you from truth? Because it proves that 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 you are 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.
Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you to live, and 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.[/quote]
In summary, the reason why we, as progeny of God* and therefore God, become sick (and not just sick, but think we need food and water and air and warmth - every precept we have come up with that shores up the needs of the body and makes us focus on our fleshsuits) is to prove to ourselves that our body is more important than God. Our ego is that part of us born in the thought that we are separated from God. The needs of the body are what ego uses to perpetuate itself - as we focus on caring for bodily needs, we are feeding the ego ~ feeding the premise that we are separate from God. So what is the solution? (page 55)
[quote]The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to accept it as it is. You are part of reality which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of spirit. When you are afraid, be still and know that God is real, and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Do you let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is far beyond its reach as you are.
God is not the author of fear. You are. You have chosen to create unlike Him, and therefore made fear for yourself. You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty function that you are not meeting. Your ego has chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it.[/quote]
Okay, ACIM, what therefore is my function? My very lofty function?
This is the part that makes me wiggle (because perhaps you, like me, weren't really wiggling at the beginning of this piece), and here I will summarize (because the book says this often in many places).
Our function is to be happy, to forgive, to love, to express who we are, to rest in the TRUTH that we are God and therefore unassailable and can be ourselves. Our function is to be ourselves, knowing we are a spark of the Divine (and therefore Divine). Our function is to recognize there is no separation between us and our brothers/sisters who are also God. "Do onto others," because we are all the same, there is no other. (lesson 156)
[quote]...ideas leave not their source. If this be true, how can you be apart from God? How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source?
Truth must be true throughout, if it be true. It cannot contradict itself, nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from him and life.
The light in you is what the universe longs to belong. All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The light you carry is their own. And thus they see in you their holiness, seeing you as savior and as God.
This is the way salvation works. As you step back [as in "you" the ego "you"- cb], the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would want to waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?[/quote]
This reminds me of when I was teaching. My first year I was eaten alive by the students on my classroom management skills because I hadn't yet grokked that a perfectly good answer to a question from a 12 year old is "Because I said so." It was only once I was able to fully embrace my role as an adult and therefore the undisputed winner in any powerplay that fights stopped happening in the class. The kids needed an adult to reign in their more rambunctious tendencies.
The same way I imagine egos - running around, creating problems, fidgeting over this and fidgeting over that - while the infinite patience of God waits for us to realize that we are the adults in the classroom, not the confused children.
So here we have it from A Course in Miracles, "in lightness and laughter is sin gone," which brings me to Abraham (a phalange of entities who come in via Esther Hicks). Abraham tells us (pg 44-45 from Ask and It Is Given_)
[quote]Your emotions indicate the degree of your alignment with Source. Although you can never achieve such a complete misalignment with Source that you disconnect from it altogether, the thoughts that you choose to give your attention to do give you a substantial range in alignment or misalignment with the Non-Physical Energy that is truly who you are. And so, with time and practice, you will come to know, in every moment, your degree of alignment with who you really are, for when you are in full allowance of the Energy of your Source, you thrive, and to the degree that you do not allow this alignment, you do not thrive.
You are empowered Beings; you are utterly free to create_, and when you know that, and are focused on things that are in vibrational harmony with that, you feel absolute joy. But when you think thoughts that are contrary to that truth, you feel the opposite emotions of disempowerment and bondage.
When you think a thought that rings true with who you really are, you feel harmony coursing through your physical body: Joy, love, and a sense of freedom are examples of that alignment. And when you think thoughts that do _not _ring true with who you really are, you feel the disharmony in your physical body. Depression, fear, and feelings of bondage are examples of that misalignment.
...you create by molding Energy. You mold it through your power of focus - by thinking about things, remembering things, and imagining things. You focus the Energy when you speak, when you write, when you listen, when you are silent, when you remember, and when you imagine - you focus it through the projection of thought.[/quote]
Abraham has a lot of tapes and whatnot one can explore where people tap into specific concerns (love, money, weight lose, etc). From my perspective the crux of the whole matter is whether or not I feel happy. If thinking, talking, writing about something makes me upset or sad - it means I am deliberately removing myself from the deluge of happiness from Source.
(This does not of course include crying when one feels the need to cry, or yelling to flush out the emotion so it doesn’t get stored in the cells to bite your grandchildren in the karmic bottom.)
I was accused recently of being in denial and ignoring reality (“walking into walls†was the phrase).
I think it all depends on which reality one is talking about. Do I deny I am a body and this physical realm is our reality? Yes. Do I deny that I am a Daughter of She - that most amazing Cosmic Consciousness that created and loves all of us? Nope. Does that mean I ignore the body? Nope, I send it love - capital L LOVE from the Big Banana - trusting that the Universe is a better bus driver than I am. Love to all of the wonderful parts of it that are working beautifully and trust that the rest will work out.
I am finding the more I focus on the flow of well-being, love, fun, happiness, and joy the more of that I am seeing. The Goddess is surrounding me with her love and therefore I can send that out into my life and the life of others. My "reality" is changing based on what I am focusing on and that is awesomesauce.
My final thinking thought for this morning is this - don't get stuck in the waiting place, you are powerful enough to accomplish your dreams, you are God (as Dr. Seuss says...)
*Spirit/Atman/Cosmic Consciousness/the Big Banana/Source/Essence/etc
