Sickness and pain are opportunities to put our money where our mouths are, to stand in our truth. We can use both to demonstrate and simultaneously learn that we are not an ego, as Jesus admonished. Not for ourselves, because we do not exist as separate-from-God individual selves, but for our collective of brothers, jointly known as the Son of God.

Every time we teach or learn of the Course, we are giving medicine to our collective sick mind. This medicine, these miracles, do not come from the us we think we are. They come from beyond consciousness, beyond perceptionland. They are manna from Heaven. The medicine comes through us. Only the ego self cares how the medicine is received. Our job is only to deliver it. We cannot and do not know the plan.

If our physical body is showing up as sick or in pain, know first that the body cannot be sick. It is impossible. The experience of sickness and pain are part of the great deception perpetrated by the great deceiver. It is an unhappy fiction which is used by the ego to keep our belief in the separation unquestioned. Presently most of us must participate.

Eventually, when our minds are sufficiently healed, we will no longer be subject to such delusions. In the meantime, as these deceptions still have our faith, we can interact with them in one of two ways. We can give them to the ego to teach of separation or we can give them to the Holy Spirit to teach of salvation.

Any situation can be given to false authority, the ego, the tyrant that will use it for imprisonment. We can change our mind at any time. To change our mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority. How do we place this situation at the disposal of true Authority?

STEP ONE

Admit that we do not have control over the mind and that we are presently powerless to the ego’s use of it.

 

Admit that we gave the ego authority to use the mind. It is uses it to miscreate.

Admit that we made the ego. Admit that we have done this thing and it is this we would undo.

Admit that our self-reliance has brought us to this powerless and vulnerable place and only our complete surrender will give us access to our true power, God-reliance.

Admit that we cannot obtain our freedom on our own, of and by our self.

Submit ourselves to our God given help, our answer, our protection, the Voice for God. He will tell us exactly what to do, say and think.

We declare ourselves the humbled servants of the Holy Spirit. No more self-efforting. We give all of our miscreations, including the world and the body and the self we made to the Holy Spirit to be undone and used as aids to help us reach the home where God abides.

STEP TWO

Do what the Holy Spirit tells us to do, say and think in regards to the situation. In the face of pain and sickness and fear, we can reflexively resort to self-efforting. The goal is not to relieve the perceived suffering. We have done that in a million ways, in a million lifetimes.

Our goal, with the Holy Spirit, is to free our will. If our will were not imprisoned, we would not be participating in this charade. Our goal is stop participating in pain and sickness once and for all. Only the Holy Spirit knows how to guide us to this goal.

Practically speaking what does this look like? Remember, the ego is involved in a deception and we are believing it. The ego is telling us what to do, say and think with the goal of keeping us in a fear state. We must loosen its grip by asking the Holy Spirit everything.

Do not listen to the ego telling us that we cannot hear the Holy Spirit, that if we do not do this or that we will die or that that is crazy talk. What we do is not important. The imperative is that we ask the Holy Spirit first. Let Him lead the way. Ask Him everything. The body is not sick. We are believing that it can be.

Go to the doctor. Don’t go to the doctor. Take medication. Don’t take medication. Drink water. Don’t drink water. Stay in bed for a week. Don’t stay in bed for a week. None of this matters. Ask the Holy Spirit everything and trust Him. He has the goal of freedom firmly in mind. The ego and your little self do not.

Sickness and pain are an excellent opportunity to practice God-reliance instead of self-reliance. Let us get off this incessant and endless hamster wheel of suffering, pain and death and return our mind to God. Let us look at all seeming sickness and pain and death as an ego deception that we can use individually and collectively for the Holy Spirit’s purpose of salvation, the undoing of all of this.

Do not be tempted to make this deception real in any of its forms. When it crosses our path, let us look at it calmly and ask what the Holy Spirit wants us to do, say or think. This sickness, this pain and even this death, is no more real than the millions we have experienced before. At some point, the adults must step forward and do what it takes to end this murderous child’s game. This starts and ends with asking the Holy Spirit everything.