Do You Want to Be Healed?

"Wilt thou be made whole?" -- The Bible; John 5:6

"And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole." -- The Bible; Mark 6:56

"Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real... A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect... Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 27, Section II, 4:1-2, 5:2, and 6:4

"Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." -- The Bible; Matthew 9:2

Do you want to be healed? The need for healing takes so many different forms. It can appear to be physical, like so many of the healings in The Bible. It can appear to be relationships that need healing. It can appear to be emotional, or mental, or financial, or simply a vague feeling of disquiet and discontent. It can even show up as the longing for special relationships or as ambition and lust for power and control. A Course in Miracles says that it takes great spiritual maturity to realize that there is absolutely no difference in any of these. Form is irrelevant and essentially unreal and therefore untrue. The content of all seeking (even spiritual seeking) and all problems is the same. The content is always the belief in separation from God, the belief that we are separate from Goodness itself, and therefore have to make our own way. This fragmented perception projects a wounded self and a wounded world.

This fragmented perception that I have named 'me' has a vested interest in not being healed, not being whole. This autonomous fiction uses fear, which is also a fiction, to avoid, resist, obscure, and generally maintain the illusion of separateness and pain, suffering, lack, and every other imaginable form of separation from Good. An illusion isn't capable of truly doing anything, so it relies on projection, very much like a movie relies on the projection of images to suck us into story. We like it. It's our illusion.

So do we want to be healed? Jeshua ben Joseph always asked this first. Because when we do truly want to remember our wholeness more than our fragmented perceptions, we will. As Jesus said, "For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?" (The Bible; Matthew 9:5) ACIM says it this way: "Forgiveness offers everything I want." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 122) When we let go of insisting we are separate, all the imagined, projected sins (our 'own' and everybody else's) are simply not. They never were.

I love that in the biblical stories about Jesus' healings, all anybody had to do was touch the hem of his garment. In other words, all we have to do is want to Remember Who We Are. If we turn ever so slightly, if we mentally reach out and barely touch the Truth, then the dream simply vanishes, the illusion dissolves. In the Light of Truth there is no darkness, sin, suffering, or death. This is the true forgiveness of sins that offers everything we want.

So do you want to be healed? Do you want to remember your Wholeness, your Infinite Beingness, your unchanging Love, and your endless Joy? Can you handle it? The little separated self says no. It says that just this little separated piece is all I want... just this imaginary form, without real content. Infinite Being is unimaginable. It's too much. It's delusional. Look around you with your body's eyes, and behold the great projection. This is your everyday reality. Be content with the little you think you have. If you let go of it, you'll be sorry. Everything will change. You'll be sorry. What do you think you're doing?

I love to think about the great courage it took for the sick and outcast to reach out to Jesus. They were subjected to scorn and disbelief afterwards, and some part of them knew that would happen... how could there not be a lot of hoopla when someone who has been deformed and crippled from birth suddenly gets up and walks? No wonder they all said, "He did it!" To acknowledge their own choice within themselves would have been the real healing (which is why Jesus said, "Go and tell no one")... but even though they had the courage to reach out for an end to their apparent suffering, they did not have the courage to be truly healed. And true healing through forgiveness is what Jesus still teaches today.

Do you want to be healed? Do you want to see the split within your own mind that is projected as body and as world? Do you want to forgive and Remember?

"Who forgives is healed. And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 27, Section II, 3:10-11