ForgiveNest Podcast Transcript: ACIM | Illness and the Body as Separation Symptoms - What Is Illness, A Course in Miracles with Alison Anton
"Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one?" [ACIM CE W-262.1:4]
This is Alison Anton. You're listening to the ForgiveNest Podcast for A Course in Miracles. Your place to explore ACIM topics in healing, meditation, and your special function in forgiveness.
The previous is a line of a prayer from A Course in Miracles. I'll read it again:
"Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one?"
This question is referring to the Son of God (us) in a thousand forms; in a thousand bodies. One Son, one mind, in millions upon countless millions of forms and names. The question alludes to the Course's premise that all of us are one mind that needlessly splintered into what we call bodies. Why should we perceive a thousand bodies in what is really just one mind?
A Thousand Forms For One Illness
We can also ask the same thing when contemplating sickness in the body. Why so many names and forms of illness when there is just one? There's only one cause for sickness, and if you're practicing the Course you know what that is—that we split our mind. We'll talk about that in a minute.
Just like we do when we separate our one mind into multitudes of bodies, we obfuscate things and take the one cause of sickness in the body and we give it a thousand names too. In other words, we create multitudes of causes when really there's just one. What caused the cancer? Is it 5G? Is it plastic? Is it contaminants in our water? Is it stress?
Yeah, it could have been any of these things that are known to cause cancer in the body, but these "causes" can really be lumped into what I'd call the symptoms category.
If we examine it closely enough from the perspective that Jesus gives us in the Course, none of these are the cause. They are merely a reflection of the cause, or a perceived effect of the cause—or in other words, the causes we think are causes are really just symptoms of a deeper cause. So from that framework, even plastic or stress, for instance, would merely be a symptom of something much bigger than itself.
The Root of the Cause
So let's get to the root of the cause.
The Course says the cause of all these symptoms—be it bodies, or physical or mental illness—these are symptoms of an error in the mind that led us to think we separated ourselves from God.
This decision we made is deeply unconscious. It's so far deep in our minds, we don't even see this error anymore because it's so far gone. It's covered up with layer upon layer of psychic defense and layer upon layer of what we think is time. There's so much cover up that we don't even remotely remember. Again, this one error is the decision to split the mind away from God, Who, in the nature of His creation, created minds to remain joined as one.
What's so interesting is that we don't remember this original mistake, but on some level, we do have to pretend not to see it everywhere. Do we really not see it? Is it really not something we see and experience every single day?
I would say no. It's right here in front of our faces.
The nature of the separation and the memory of the separation may be so far hidden, but the reflection of the separation surely is not. All you have to do is hold up your hand in front of your face. Your body is the reflection of the separation.
From the Course's cosmology, the separated mind is what ultimately made the physical universe, or 3D, and eventually our world, our species, our bodies, and of course, our illness in our bodies.
These are all symptoms of this one hidden error. If the body is just a symptom, all disease in the body is just a symptom too. So, yeah, the Course's is Jesus says disease is actually in the mind, not the body.
Here's one short passage from A Course in Miracles about what the body is in Jesus's words. He says:
"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles."
[ACIM CE W-WI.5.1:1-2]
Healing the Mind, and Our Bodies
So when Jesus talks about sickness in the Course material, he's not always talking about sickness of the body, like cancer or heart disease or irritable bowel syndrome, etcetera. Yeah, he refers to body illness; and yes, he also says illnesses of the body can be cured, but we need to constantly remind ourselves that because these are technically symptoms, and because the body is also just a symptom, true healing can only happen at the source of the error—or at the original place of the cause of the error—which is always in the mind, specifically the part of the mind that decided to separate itself.
So that's what we're asking to be healed.
This concept is the very basis of why miracles and why healing are needed. Healing the separation is what A Course in Miracles is about. We're asked to look squarely at the morbidity of what the separation has caused, but then to choose the help that will get our ourselves out of it and return us to God.
Jesus would never leave us at the morbidity of something and then walk away saying, “have fun”. No. The Course is a course; it's a program. It gives us this framework we've been talking about, but it wouldn't be a program if it didn't also give us the instructions on what we need to do.
What Did I Do To Deserve This?
Something I want to be clear about here before we end is that we need to be very careful about finger pointing at ourselves and others. Yeah, we need to look at our minds very carefully, but all of us do, whether we're struggling with illness or not.
When I was a medical intuitive, most of the people I worked with were sick. That's why they came to me! I was sick too for many years, with multiple conditions stemming from Lyme disease.
And one of the biggest things, probably the biggest thing aside to the illness itself (and for me, it was equal to the physical pain I was having) was this very sad and confusing sense that I wasn't as holy as, or as good as, or as special as the people who were feeling "healthy".
Was it bad karma?
Was I being punished?
What did I do to deserve this?
But what we really have to do here is remember Jesus's cosmology: You either see yourself as divided, or you see yourself as undivided.
When the mind is divided, we suffer no matter what. When it's undivided, we're in love, which doesn't even know the meaning of suffering. And that's where Jesus is trying to get us to.
We have a way to go.
So if you're having thoughts that something particularly “special” must be happening to you if you're working through a medical condition, think again. If you're suffering with an illness, please don't get caught in that trap of punishing yourself or seeing yourself as less enlightened.
I'll do more posting on this topic for sure, because it's a big one for us. We'll talk more about healing the separation, how to ask for correction and guidance, and how to really use A Course in Miracles as your daily meditation and healing practice.
Ending Prayer
I'll leave you now with the full version of the prayer I read at the beginning.
Close your eyes if you like. This is from Workbook Lesson 262 from the Complete and Annotated Edition of A Course in Miracles:
“Father, You have one Son. And it is he that I would look upon today. He is Your one creation. Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one? Why should I give this one a thousand names, when only one suffices? For Your Son must bear Your Name, for You created him. Let me not see him as a stranger to his Father, nor as a stranger to myself. For he is part of me and I of him, and we are part of You Who are our Source, eternally united in Your love, eternally the holy Son of God.” [ACIM CE W-262:1]
And I’ll leave you with that to ponder.
Thanks for joining me on the ForgiveNest Podcast.
I'm Alison Anton. It was great talking to you.
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