Being students of A Course in Miracles doesn’t protect us from challenges and hardships in life, any more than it makes us immune to experiencing body-based illnesses. While ACIM does not endorse any external methods for healing in the world, it also doesn’t deny that these methods can help improve the body’s state and physical health.
So if you’re struggling with a physical condition, or symptoms that you haven’t been able to shift or find relief from, energy healing might be able to help. Interested in finding out whether this form of treatment might be effective for you? If so, get in touch and lets explore what’s possible.
Forever grateful
On 13 August 2019 my brother had an accident in Athens and fell over the edge of a balcony 3 storeys high, landing on hard concrete with nothing to break his fall. He was taken to hospital by emergency services and placed in a medically induced coma. I contacted Kat because I knew of her amazing work and I knew my brother needed serious help.
Kat began her distance healing for my brother from Australia while he was in the coma. She also asked me to join her in meditation during set times, which I did on several occasions. My brother came out of the coma 3 weeks after his accident and just 2 weeks later he walked out of hospital alive and well, his recovery an outstanding miracle!
The doctors told us to expect him to be in hospital for at least 6 months and that he may not be able to function at all upon awakening, yet he was out of hospital in just 1.5 months. An even greater blessing, my brother completely recovered physically and cognitively, with no ongoing injuries! We are so grateful and blessed to have him with us, alive and well, and I cannot thank Kat enough for her efforts. Thank you Kat, I am forever grateful for your help and the blessing our family has been given through my brother’s recovery.”
What Is The Difference Between Sickness & Healing According To The World & ACIM?
Have you ever felt a bit confused about what A Course in Miracles means by healing? If so, you are not alone. Healing is a prominent theme in ACIM but can be very easily misunderstood.
What exactly is sickness and healing? How should you deal with, or view physical illnesses in yourself or others? And does A Course in Miracles recommend energy healing as an effective healing modality?
In the interests of clarity, it’s usually best to start with the fundamentals.
The first thing to understand is that A Course in Miracles defines sickness and healing completely differently to the way these concepts are understood in the world.
Sickness & Healing As Understood In The World
In the world, sickness refers to illness in a body (physical, emotional, or psychological). As such, healing refers to the state in which illness or symptoms in a body are cleared.
Sickness can take many different forms, just as there are many different forms of help or treatments available in the world that might bring relief or recovery.
Sickness & Healing As Understood By ACIM
According to the Course however, there is no world- there is only the split mind that is dreaming of the world. As such, sickness is defined as the belief in separation from God within the mind. Accordingly, healing refers to the state in which the idea of separation (the sickness) in the mind is erased.
A Course in Miracles specifies that as there is only one sickness in the mind (the belief in the separation), there is also only one remedy for it. This remedy is the practice of true forgiveness- the method of healing the split mind of its erroneous belief in separation.
This is why forgiveness is synonymous with healing and sanity in ACIM, and the belief in separation, sin, guilt and fear are synonymous with sickness and insanity.
Click here for a guide on how to practice true forgiveness as defined by the Course.
The World & ACIM Define Sickness & Healing As Occurring In Different Places
This basic difference between the world’s understanding of where sickness and healing occur compared to that of A Course in Miracles’, is what can make this subject confusing.
We are used to thinking of sickness and health in purely body-based terms. And we are not used to thinking of, or being aware of, the split mind at all. In fact, we don’t even remember that we have a mind that exists beyond space and time.
It’s no wonder then that the Course and the world have different definitions of sickness and healing when they define them as residing exclusively in entirely different places.
Viewing the world as an illusion, the Course refers to sickness and healing as occurring strictly in the mind where there is only one sickness and one remedy for healing it. While the world, being completely unaware of the reality of the mind, refers to sickness and healing as occurring strictly in the body within the world, in which many different forms of sickness and remedies for healing alike, can be found.
Once we are clear on that basic distinction of where the Course and the world believe sickness and healing take place, and how many types of sicknesses and healing agents can appear to function, things start sounding much clearer.
ACIM Is Getting You To Do One Thing: Forgive
Most importantly, this means that if you are a student of A Course in Miracles its essential to understand that Jesus is not interested in what you do in the world. He is only interested in encouraging you to practice true forgiveness in order to heal your unconscious mind's belief in the separation from God, and the ego's subsequent wrong-minded interpretation of it being a grave irreparable sin that makes you guilty, and fearful of seemingly justified and well-deserved punishment.
This is because Jesus only acknowledges the mind- not the body- as real. As such, he is only interested in helping you heal your unconscious mind wherein there is but one sickness and one solution that can heal it.
ACIM Says That The Body Is Illusory, But That Doesn't Mean You Shouldn't Take Care Of It
It makes sense then that the Course makes no specific world-based healing suggestions when it comes to sickness experienced in the body. Given ACIM asserts that the world is an illusion, the multitude of different illnesses and treatments found in the world are all essentially illusory too.
So, whether your body is ill, or a treatment seems to cure it, nothing is really happening if it is all made up. However, this does not mean that you shouldn't try to find help in the world that is effective for your physical conditions. It just means that from the Course's perspective, Jesus wants you to view sickness in the body as he would have you view any situation in the world: correctly.
To perceive correctly simply means to view things from the Holy Spirit's right-minded, and thus healing perspective, which would encourage you to keep applying forgiveness while also taking care of your body as required.
You Can Be An ACIM Student & Benefit From World-Based Help
Being an ACIM student simply means we need to forgive in order to put into practice its spiritual principles. Just as you can be an ACIM student and also work in any job or career you like, when it comes to your body's physical, emotional, and psychological needs, you can also pick and use whatever world-based form of help works for you.
In other words, you are free to find and use the healing methods in the world that improve the body's physical health and help relieve your symptoms. This is basically why I offer energy healing despite being an ACIM student.
Just as you can be an ACIM student and be physically helped by surgery, therapy, herbal remedies, physiotherapy, a placebo, prescribed medicine, and/or homeopathy, you can also be a student of the Course and benefit from energy healing.
Just Keep Forgiving & Find The Help In The World That Works For You
When you're sick, what matters is not necessarily the type of help you receive in the world. What matters is that it is effective for you in that it helps relieve your pain and discomfort. And from the Course's perspective, all that matters is that you continue to forgive in all situations- not just when you're physically unwell, or whether you get treatment in the world that works or not.
ACIM has nothing to do with what you do in the world, and what you do in the world has no bearing on your spiritual work with the Course. This is precisely because your only responsibility as a student of ACIM is to forgive to heal the mind, and you can practice forgiveness no matter where you are, what you're doing or experiencing in the world, and no matter what the state of your body (whether seemingly healthy or otherwise).
Use Your Identification With The Body For The Holy Spirit's Healing Purpose
It is crucial to grasp that ACIM is not against you trying to improve your body’s state. While Jesus makes it extremely clear that the body is an illusion, he also understands how identified we are with it while our mind remains split and partly allied with the ego thought system.
This is why rather than having us deny our belief in, and experience of, the illusory world and body, Jesus would instead have us use them in service of the Holy Spirit's purpose of forgiveness. This helps us look at everything through His loving perspective, which motivates us to forgive and thereby heal the mind of its belief in separation.
ACIM's Core Message: You Don't Need To Suffer
At the end of the day, the Course's overriding message is that you do not need to suffer no matter where or how you believe you are suffering. This is because it maintains that all suffering originates in the mind's belief in separation, and given we can never be separate from God in truth, all suffering, no matter where or how you seem to experience it, is therefore unnecessary.
Suffering simply does not exist in God, and we are as God created us; His one, holy and innocent Son. All our suffering then, no matter what the form, can be traced back to our original belief on the level of the mind that we could be, and want to be, separate from God.
In this sense, and despite all appearances to the contrary, we are always the cause of all our suffering on the unconscious level of the mind. Our pain is not caused by God any more than it is by anything else in the world.
On the bright side, this means that we also have the power to free ourselves of our suffering by reversing our unconscious mind's choice for it, which is the choice for separation, sin, guilt, fear and the ego.
How You Should View & Deal With Illness In The Body
Ultimately then, this should be the way we view illness in the body: as a symbol or representation of our unconscious mind's belief in separation (the choice for sickness), and thus as an opportunity to heal the mind by choosing to practice the Holy Spirit's only remedy for it; forgiveness.
Now considering that body-based illnesses or conditions do appear to cause us distress and suffering, the Course would similarly not want you to continue suffering even though it teaches that everything in the world is an illusion.
If we extend its core teaching that we don't need to suffer because we are one with God in truth and there is no suffering in Him, it logically follows that the Course would want us to experience relief from all pain no matter what the form of pain we seem to be suffering from, and no matter what form of help seems to provide relief.
ACIM's Compromise Approach To Healing While In The World
The form of suffering (sickness) and the form of help (healing) as we see them in the world is irrelevant. What matters is that you understand and accept that you don't need to suffer full stop.
The Course's compromise approach to healing while we appear to be embodied in the world can be summarised as follows then:
Look after your body's needs; find the physical, emotional, and psychological help you require in whatever form helps you relieve your experience of suffering. And while you're at it, stay committed to keep forgiving no matter what you seem to be experiencing.
In other words, respect what each level of reality appears to need: give the body what it requires, and give the mind the forgiveness that will heal it of its belief in separation. In this way, you can continue to heal the true cause of all suffering- the mind's sick belief in separation- while simultaneously tending to your individual physical needs.
If, however, you are grappling with an illness and would like to try whether energy healing can be of assistance to you, get in touch by filling out the contact form below.