The difference between the ego’s projection and the Holy Spirit’s extension is very simple. 2 The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. 3 The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one. 4 Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is all the same. 5 Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united He offers the whole Kingdom always. 6 This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak, because that is what He is. 7 The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you. 8 The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outward to make you aware of it.
ACIM:T-6.II.12
All You Need is Love has proven to be an enduring classic. And with new insights in Quantum Healing, it is more appropriate than ever before. So listen to it once in a while. In the view of A Course in Miracles the choice, the only choice we can make in our mind is between Love and Murder. Once you can see that, the path becomes very easy. You do not ever even have to choose Love, for Love is Truth, and Truth is Love, and there is no other place to go. Love is all there is. So as the Course also puts it:
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. 2 It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. 3 Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. 4 And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. 5 If you seek love outside yourself you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. 6 Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality.
ACIM:T-16.IV.6
In the wider discussion of what healing means, to me some things that stand out are Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven, along with Anita Moorjani’s Dying to be Me. It is worth checking out the videos of their presentations at these links.
Eben Alexander’s story is remarkable for the fact that he was once a thoroughly reductionist and materialistic neurosurgeon, who had his very own near death experience during a very grave illness, from which it was thought unlikely he would recover, and if he did would likely not have his faculties. Yet he came back. He came back a changed man.
Anita Moorjani’s deeply moving account of a complete reversal of cancer is likewise extraordinarily powerful and a testimony to the essence of healing. As I have emphasized throughout this site, the discovery of the power of the Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet in preventing and reversing most non-communicable diseases is not complete without a concomitant spiritual healing process.
The sequence that leads me there is simple:
- We find out we can prevent or reverse disease with a Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet.
- We realize that now, to a substantial degree, we have the power to decide our health.
- We realize that we are often conflicted: we do not always want to eat what is good for us. Bad food can seem very tempting. What are we missing here?
- At this point we might consult Ken Wapnick’s Dialogue on Overeating, which explores these issues very deeply with a small group of students of A Course in Miracles. The point here is that merely changing the form without changing the content is pointless. What needs to be done is getting to the bottom of our self-destructive behaviors, so they finally lose their charm and attraction. Another good source is Cindy Lora-Renard’s A Course in Health and Well-being.
- In other words, the cause is always in the mind. We have the tools, we have the choice of what is at the end of our fork. We have the choice in our minds between Love and Murder, life is all about learning to make the right choice. Discovering that we have a mind that can choose is the first step towards taking responsibility for our health and well-being, and ultimately our inner peace.
When we are in the dissociative state (ego) we think life happens to us, when we are in the observer/contemplative mode we understand the mind is dreaming this up and gradually we learn to change our mind and tune in more and more to ΅the better angels of our nature,” (Abraham Lincoln), or the Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles), or as many traditions call it, our higher self, or our Inner Teacher (the Course also uses this term). That is when the healing can begin, not before.
Human Adulthood
The state of human adulthood begins when we can accept the fact that in every still frame of the movie we call our life “we” are there – it is the one thing all the scenes have in common. The reason for this is simple: this is YOUR life and the script was written by your mind. This is the moment when we stop blaming others for our problems, for we begin at least to suspect that we had something to do with the problem. We are now able to take responsibility for our lives and a healing process can begin on the basis that we now realize we want to make better choices even if we do not know how.
A Course in Miracles leaves us in the hands for our Inner Teacher, which it usually designates as Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It could be Krishna, Buddha, Quan Yin, or whoever stands for that Love and Wisdom in your tradition. The point being, you do not ask your ego, you do not try to muddle through on your own, for that is how you got in trouble in the first place. Problems need to get solved at a higher level than where they occurred (Einstein), so we need to appeal to a higher authority, and that is our brother Jesus, who has found the way home and now he can teach us.
5 Healing occurs as a patient begins to hear the dirge he sings, and questions its validity. 6 Until he hears it, he cannot understand that it is he who sings it to himself. 7 To hear it is the first step in recovery. 8 To question it must then become his choice.
ACIM:P-2.VI.1:5-8
Heretofore, we thought our problems were caused by the world outside, but now we take responsibility. Left to our own devices, we might feel guilty for our stupidity of making the same mistakes over and over again, but now we turn to “the better angels of our nature,” as Abraham Lincoln would call it. Or the Forgiveness of Jesus, as the Course would call it. And Jesus smiles, and forgives us, and asks: “What problem?” We made up the problem, and by the very act of asking for help means we are starting to let go of the problem and inspiration will do the rest to help us shift to the solution.
Making the Choice for Healing
On the practical level, one of the coolest insights came from Dr. Milton Mills, who points out that in the delivery room, you did not wake up with a taste for things like steak, Dunkin Donuts, or a Big Mac. It was a learned behavior and now you can learn something else.
The psychological programs that have become popular in the Whole Foods, Plant-Based nutrition area may have a contribution to make, but they are not enough. The neuropsychological approach of Douglas Lisle (The Pleasure Trap) is helpful in understanding all the mechanisms why bad foods can seem so satisfying. Dr. Neal Barnard’s The Cheese Trap, is quite helpful in understanding the addictive nature of cheese. So far, so good for understanding the problem, but we want to find the solution. It is in Ken Wapnick’s dialogue on Overeating, where you begin to understand the games we play, and the way out of hell, or in a more general sense in Cindy Lora-Renard’s book A Course in Health and Well-Being. In ACLM, something called positive psychology now seems to be in vogue, which will never work because it is merely another way of wearing rose colored glasses and shouting down the ego. We do need to do the hard work of shining a light on the dark, shadowy sides of the ego and eventurally grow up when it completely loses its appeal to us.
In short, the point of the whole exercise is that the discovery of the Whole Foods, Plant-Based nutrition is a tremendously powerful tool and lifestyle medicine is changing medicine forever, but the inner work of increasingly learning to choose wholeness in our lives by unlearning the appeal of our self-destructive tendencies is the real work. Without it, just changing our diet is not enough, nor are we likely to stick to it in the long run.