Reading A Course in Miracles you’ll often find passages talking about how the body is not the appropriate “target” for healing. That it is the mind that needs to be healed. Yet at the same time, the course talks about how the body can be healed through the healing of the mind (and actually has to be, but that’s a subject for another day). Let’s look at all this.
If you’re watching a scary movie, oftentimes when something is going wrong, you feel the intensity of the moment. You get immersed in it. Even though in the back of your mind you know it’s just a movie, you can still feel drawn into it. Our ideas work in a similar way. We get drawn into them, and because the mind is so powerful, it can make them seem real, even to the extent that they project into a seeming physical reality, which the course refers to as the illusion.
The mind is powerful! And the course does not shy away from explaining how the mind’s decision to identify with different thought systems will project health or sickness in the form. The form being everything we experience in physicality. In fact, it goes as far as to say that the body does nothing on its own. It is 100% the mind that decides what “happens” to the body. It even says the body doesn’t actually have reflexes!
However, for healing, it is vital to understand that the form really has no bearing on reality. The acceptance of this fact happens in the mind.
If you understand that the movie has no bearing on your theatre seat, you would also understand that the happenings in the form, in the body, and in the world have no bearing on reality. While the mind is focused on the senses, reality is veiled. Yet reality is still present. Reality, as the course describes it, is a state of eternal peace, happiness, creation, and communion. Another word is Heaven. So you can depict yourself - and it would be an accurate depiction - as a heavenly soul having a little nightmare. In this nightmare, you seem to be imprisoned within a body, suffering in some form. But whatever this nightmare contains cannot “reach back” and affect you in Heaven. Again, just in the same way someone can’t reach out of your movie screen and truly hurt you. The nightmare can, however, affect your emotional state temporarily as you are drawn into the drama of it.
So, let’s continue with this analogy. Let’s say you are genuinely scared of something in the movie. But what are you afraid of? You know it can’t really hurt you, or anyone else for that matter. It’s this fear that attaches us to the drama. And so in our confusion, we might pray or ask to get rid of something in the movie. For example, if there is a dragon about to eat your favourite character, and you feel scared to the bone, so you say “please God don’t hurt Billy - please remove the dragon,” you are really asking for something that fundamentally rests on confusion. A true healing event would be for you to realise it is just a movie, then you can laugh and wipe your sweat away.
The difference in these analogies is that when you accept that the movie is just a movie, the movie doesn’t really change. But this is not the case for the physical world, the world of form. The world of form is an effect of the cause. That cause is the mind. So your acceptance that your very essence is safe forever, along with everyone you love, is exactly the change of mind needed to produce a change in the form.
Imagine a movie that responds to what you believe - now that’s kind of it.
If you are following, then you understand in seeming paradox of this. Paradoxically (but not really when you understand it), the decision to accept that the healing of the body really doesn’t matter, is actually what heals the mind. If you can reach a state where you can find peace in yourself despite some kind of ailment (or some sort of disaster in the world) through the recognition that the ailment doesn’t matter, then you are actually allowing the mind to be healed. And that healing naturally projects itself as an effect as health in the form.
From a certain perspective, you can almost say that to the extent that you recognise body healing is meaningless, the more your body will heal. The more you see the movie as a movie, and the truth as the truth, the more the movie changes to reflect your healed mind back to you.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Many people who understand this at a superficial level go into nihilism. It’s easy to think, “well then nothing matters” and just completely dismiss everything and everyone in the world. The course doesn’t say nothing matters and nobody exists. We do exist. But we exist in Heaven, as souls - mind and spirit. That’s the difference. We are confused, wandering around in a (somewhat) shared illusion. I am confused and you are confused - presumably. We are here for each others healing. If I am healed, I can share that with you. If you are healed, you can share that with me. You are a conscious being and you ought to be healed and happy. As am I. I exist and so do you. What the course says is that you and I were both created by God, in spirit - not body - in perfect happiness. This world is a place where we can learn to help and heal each other through sharing our recongition of our shared source.
Let’s get back on track now…
Most of time when people are seeking healing, it is at the level of the physical. And the mental approach is some version of, “when X issue resolves itself, then I’ll be healed”… However healing is a decision to accept that regardless (I really like this word) of what is happening in the form, or the appearance, reality still is what it is. Which means you have to mentally side with reality, in a similar sense to how if you were watching a scary movie, you need to accept the fact that you are actually sitting in a movie theatre and feel the seat beneath you.
However, with this understanding, it is really tempting to attempt to do body-healing through mind-healing. I hope you can see this is exactly what the course is saying not to do. For example, it’s really quite easy to say, “well, now I know the formula to heal my body, I have to heal my mind first”. But note the underlying tone of that statement is that the body is still the target for healing, and the mind the means. This is the opposite of what the course is saying! The mind is sick because it is identified with a body.
In other words, it’s only through the recognition that body healing doesn’t matter at all that the mind can be healed. Then you reach a state of happiness in the face of the ailment. You are no longer waiting for healing. You have arrived home, regardless of what’s in the movie. And as you accept this fact and have faith in it, your peace deepens. As your peace deepens, your desire to change or “heal” the physical ailment fades away.
When this healing “effect” does occur (physical healing for example), you might smile as it dawns on you that you stopped caring about it long ago. This is because your mind was healed. Get it? It’s the mind that needs healing. You need to accept, in your mind, the reality of the situation. The situation is that God created in you in perfect peace and perfect happiness, and nothing can actually affect that. It can only “draw you into the drama”.
So, to bring it back to fear - because that is the obstacle - you need to realise that nothing in form can really hurt you. It can only scare you. But don’t be afraid! There’s no reason. When you ask for physical healing, you are really asking out of fear. You are afraid of the sickness, of the pain, and of death. That fear is what stops your mind from drifting back into the peace of God. The peace of God comes when you accept reality. This is a decision you need to make in your own mind using the power bestowed on you known as the power of belief. Accept the reality in the face of anything that seems to contradict it. Know that your mind is incredibly powerful, and even if you don’t see “effects” right away, you are sewing a very powerful seed in your own mind.
