26.Welcome to Insanity or You Make as Your Maker Made
Sickness is a magical solution the ego came up with when it sensed that it’s existence was threatened by truth. Sickness is a defense against the truth of who you are. As “your” maker, the wrong mind, made a magical solution, sickness, to defend itself against it’s perceived threat, truth. Then you, like your daddy, the ego, attempted to make a magical solution, some form of “cure”, to address your perceived threat, sickness. The ego made sickness as a cure and now you want to cure the cure.
The joke is that the real you, the mind, made a solution to a perceived threat which then became a threat to the “you” you think you are. Then you try to address the threat, on the level of form, where it can never be addressed. Sickness is caused by the mind. You can only pretend to address the idea of sickness, but it will keep popping up in different forms. Until its inevitable final form shows up, death. Ironically the ego’s defense against the truth, sickness, becomes your perceived attack.
The mind’s threats are not “your” threats. The mind, as identified with the ego, is concerned with keeping the illusion and the separation “real”. Without the acceptance of the reality of the illusion the ego would cease to exist. It will use everything at its disposal to tempt you to make the illusion, and more specifically the body, real. It will use carrots and sticks. It will use special love relationships, special hate relationships, the illusion of health and sickness and even death to get you to “believe”. The “you” you think you are is concerned with keeping the thing it thinks it is, the body, safe. Problem: the wrong mind thinks sickness and death are a good defense. “You”, not so much.
The wrong mind is concerned with preserving the separation because it thinks it is the ego, or as the Course defines– the thought system of fear and separation from God. “You” are concerned with preserving your body because it defines your individual, separate, special self and because “you” think you are the body. Unfortunately for “you”, little lemming, the ego thought system, that you have accepted as your own, has it set up that the wrong mind is in the driver’s seat and is making all the decisions. So when the ego drives off a cliff, you are along for the ride. Welcome to insanity.
As long as you continue to try and correct things on the level of form, you will continue, cheered on by the ego, on the endless treadmill of “existence” going from one illusory lifetime to the next. In order to get off the treadmill and start climbing the ladder home to God you must work to get that the level of form is NOT REAL and stop acting and reacting as if it were. You can either continue to make up magical solutions to your perceived problem, sickness, or you can decide to wake up and permanently end the cycle of suffering by remembering who you are. You are not the body. You are not a dream figure in the dream. You are the dreamer. You are the decider. You made sickness as a reflection of a sick thought system and the way to end sickness is to stop thinking with the ego, who only means you harm, and stop making the illusion and everything in it real. Then you can start thinking with the Holy Spirit and get home to God. As the Course says, only salvation can be said to cure.