As depicted in A Course in Miracles and supplementary material.
The Mechanism of Physical Healing
For those that don’t know, the Notes on Sound was channelled by Helen Schucman after ACIM. Although the message is relatively consistent in all the rest, the Notes on Sound succinctly ties the metaphysics of the course with the the supplementary material (especially the Psychotherapy pamphlet). In it, it describes exactly the physical mechanism behind bodily healing.
It suggests that there is something called sound (I personally believe this to be equivalent to quantum phenomena known as scalar waves or perhaps zero point fluctuations, not necessarily audible sound), which is prior to light. It suggests that the mind emits this sound, which has the ability to reorganise molecules. Specifically the light emitted by the sound of the mind can be measured in the blue frequency, albeit a kind of light currently invisible to our current instruments and physics understanding. Nevertheless, it depicts a device that can actually measure this “sound” of a mind by pointing it to the body of a patient.
If you’re raising your eyebrow at this, then it’s probably important!
From the theoretical point of view, it can be said that healing can only be the result of a change of mind which now accepts healing where it formerly accepted sickness. The change of mind alters the thought field around the patient, which seems to represent the place where he is. These changes cannot be different for a healing presumably brought about by medication, surgery, or faith. Healing can only be faith healing for sickness can only be faith in sickness.
What the device does is it measure’s an individual mind’s decision for healing by transducing the “sound” into literal audible sound, so you can actually hear the moment a patient decides for healing. Presumably, you, as the healer, would follow the steps as laid out in something like the psychotherapy handbook, in the specific context of being physically present have that device present which can actually measure when a patient decides for healing. The decision is instantaneous, as it would obviously be a holy instant. However, the subsequent effects on the body exist in time. The device itself measures the mind’s decision, rather than the effects on the body.
It says that it can take up to 5 years for the healing to stabilise, throughout which “check ups” with the device are recommended, and if the patient has relapsed, to redo the healing ideally with the same healer. After 5 years, the healing is assumed to have stabilised and the patient is virtually impossible to decide for sickness anymore.
It further elaborates by talking about how the patient might have other physical “symptoms”, which it equates to a call for help.
The patient may, however, develop other symptoms, since physical healing represents a realignment of essentially local forces rather than the total context. This is because they still occur in time, and therefore retain the illusory quality of time itself. Each new symptom, or call for help, is, however, susceptible to healing on its own. Further, it can be said that this susceptibility increases with each successful healing.
How to Heal
1. Accept the Atonement for yourself
Accept that you are healed and whole and perfectly innocent. Accept that the mind is the only creative level, and that in truth you can only create in peace, light, and happiness. You can’t give what you don’t have. If you believe you are guilty, healing will be difficult (although, if you join with the intention, some good can come of it either way). Believe you are innocent in order that you can give that innocence away and recognise you are joining together and receiving what your giving.
2. Join With Them
Lose all sense of separate interests. You do not know the problem, nor what to think and what to say. You are joining with your brother in the intent you have to heal the sonship. That joining is what dissolves the ego, and allows healing to take place. This is the essence of the holy relationship.
Defencelessness! The patient is showing you a mirror of yourself, bringing your own judgments to the surface for them to heal. The patient will want to defend their self-concept. Your job is not to attack their self-concept or try to fix it. You only need to meet attack without defence. Your example of defencelessness is what shares the truth your brother, because the truth needs no defence. If you catch yourself being defensive, trying to justify your means of healing, trying to explain what the patient has to do in order to get it to “work” - this all means your ego is definitely involved.
How is it reached? ³The therapist sees in the patient all that he has not forgiven in himself, and is thus given another chance to look at it, open it to re-evaluation and forgive it. (ACIM, P-2.VI.6:2-3)
Your defencelessness also acts as a channel, because you are not defending, not holding on, you drop into a state of listening. Unattached at all, you’re able to speak with the Spirit.
Recognise you are the patient as well! We heal together. Perhaps an idea to hold in the mind is along the lines of “thank you for giving me the opportunity to see the reality in you and share my vision with you”.
3. The Effect
Although it is echoed throughout pretty much the entire text that physical sickness is a result of mis-thought, and a healed body is the counterpart of a healed mind, e.g…
Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. ²The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion. ³So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents. (ACIM, P-2.VI.5:1-3)
It is nonetheless important to emphasise that the body is not the target for healing. This is central to ACIM and should not be overlooked. The mind is apart from the body. You are not a body. No-one is a body. Bodies are ideas in minds, and minds are eternal. Identification with reality and forgiveness is what results in healing. Their healing only reflects your decision, and therefore, it makes no sense to look at a broken body and make it dictate your belief about what is real and what is false.
Remember your job is not to diagnose but to affirm the reality in yourself, forgive, and join. The result is there with that decision. It is done. To the extent that you disbelieve is the extent that you can’t share it. In that sense, only your faith in reality is necessary.
If you then see that the physical illness hasn’t fixed, remind yourself that:
- The physical illness has zero impact on reality, our shared perfect sinlessness, and that’s the only thing that matters.
- In the dimension of time, even if the patient has decided for healing in that instant, it can take some time for the physical effects to come about.
