Giving It Up

"If I say to you, "I am ill; give me help," there isn't any truth that you can declare about it that would be Truth, because there isn't any Truth about error. There is no way to correct error, because error doesn't exist. All there is, is the realization within you... and that's the healing agency. The healing agency is the realization within you of God. If you haven't a realization of God, there is not spiritual healing." -- Joel Goldsmith

"Mind is the Divine Principle, Love, and can produce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. Mind never enters the finite. Good never enters into evil, the unlimited into the limited, the eternal into the temporal, nor the immortal into mortality." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 335, Line 25-26, & Page 336, Lines 2-5

"The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in separation, and that its giving up would be a sacrifice." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 28, Section IV, 10:6

The very phrase 'giving it up' is a statement of belief in value. Whatever we 'give up' must have reality and value to us in the first place. Whatever we 'give up' must have been something we valued. Whatever we 'give up' must have been let go of pretty grudgingly. Because otherwise the phrase wouldn't be used at all. For example, we don't say we are 'giving up' the dirt when we sweep the floor and throw those dust bunnies out the door. We don't say we are 'giving up' anything when we throw away garbage. There is nothing we value there. It's nothing to us. But try throwing out things that you still attach some value to, and you will definitely see yourself 'giving up' something in your own mind. And that's where it all takes place. In your mind.

Seeing the unreality of the material dream is a prerequisite for healing... kind of like a course in Awakening 101. To paraphrase Joel Goldsmith, there is no correcting or giving up of anything, because nothing but God even exists. And as Mary Baker Eddy said, "Man was and is God's image or idea, even the infinite expression of Infinite Mind, and immortal man is coexistent and coeternal with that Mind. He has been forever in the Eternal Mind, God; but Infinite Mind can never be in man, but is reflected by man. The spiritual man's consciousness and individuality are reflections of God." (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Page 336, Lines 9-15)

That the limited can never house or contain the limitless seems obvious. What is less obvious is that the limited CAN reflect the limitless. Since the world we see is smoke and mirrors, projections of projections, we are always reflecting and mirroring. By seeing the essential unreality of the dream, what we are giving up is the need to value anything in the dream... and instead we begin to reflect the Real Value that lies behind all dreaming. We begin to be spotless mirrors for God. Then the real healing begins.

Giving it up means we still see some value in the world... but we are willing to be wrong. Giving it up means we may take our time in letting go... but we are noticing that we suffer when we hang on. Giving it up means that we still believe in the sacrifice of illusions, and have not yet seen that we are giving up nothing. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be without and to have suffered loss. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death." The death of illusions, to be sure... and it is nothing at all.

So today we practice giving it up, whatever illusion confronts us. For they are all the same. And when we let the false go, only what is Eternal and True remains. And what else, Beloved of God, could we possibly want?

"God has not many Sons, but only One. Who can have more and Who be given less? God gave You all there is. And to be sure You could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well. And thus is every living thing a part of You, as of HimSelf." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 29, Section VIII, 9:1, 7-9