ILLUSIONS AND MAGIC TRICKS HIDE THE SPLIT MIND
All magic is ultimately an illusion, so while we will likely feel pain relief after taking a paracetamol for a headache, Jesus teaches us that what really took away our pain was a decision to heal on the level of the mind. This is not the same as a conscious decision you make as an individual. The paracetamol was the physical form in which that decision to be relieved from pain at the level of the mind was expressed. But it wasn’t the true source of healing.
Like any good magic trick, the paracetamol (and any other external/world-based solution that seems to work) serves to conceal what really made the headache go away- the mind deciding to feel better. And by obscuring what really helped take our pain away, we are convinced that the paracetamol (or external world-based aid) was the real cause of our improved experience.
What this magical process (the use of magic) really conceals is the power of our mind. The power obscured is twofold:
- the power our mind to make up an illusion of a sick body, and
- the power of the mind’s ability to heal the manifest sickness.
This is the essence of the ego’s purpose for the body and world. They are used to convince us we’re not the powerful mind that literally makes up illusions of separation, but rather the vulnerable and limited body that is victim to external forces beyond its control. This establishes us as weak rather than powerful, further convincing us that we must be innocent victims rather than the powerful sinner we secretly believe we are: the mind that was ‘able’ to overthrow God.
WHY WE’RE ALWAYS SO TEMPTED TO FEEL LIKE POWERLESS VICTIMS
The belief that we are innocent victims, a body born to suffer and die, serves a principal ego function. It allows us to believe that we can escape ‘divine punishment’. The ego tells us that when God finally finds us to punish us for the ‘sin of separation’ that we fear is inevitable, we will be able to point to our body-self and exclaim: “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t the one who destroyed heaven- someone else did!”
The ego’s insane logic teaches that if we consent to suffer, our difficult lives and frail bodies would be clear and convincing proof that we could never have done something as outrageous as attacking God Himself. Our pitiful individual lives demonstrate that we are not powerful enough to have accomplished that grave sin we ourselves accuse us of.
This is why, under the ego’s guidance, we disowned our mind. This is also why our ego-motives demand that we prove we are powerless; why it needs us to be victims, feel unfairly treated, and find guilt in others. The ego counsels that if we pretend to be a helpless body convincingly enough and completely forget that we’re the mind which we accuse of being responsible for destroying heaven, then we will be able to avoid the wrath of God- the impending punishment we expect for our sins.
“Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs (the oneness that is God and His Son in Truth) but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else’s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else?”
(T-26.X.4:1-3. Italics in brackets mine.)
THE EGO’S INSANE STRATEGY: MAINTAIN POWERLESSNESS BY PROJECTING BLAME & RESPONSIBILITY
The cost of this ego strategy of dissociation is high- it has cost us our very sanity. Our allegiance to the ego-thought system hinges on us forgetting who we really are: it depends on us relinquishing the power of our mind and mistaking our identity for the individual embodied self.
What this translates to in practice is a top ego-directive: we must project blame and responsibility outside of ourselves. We project blame for pain by believing that something or someone outside us made us sick (e.g. a virus or person). And we equally project responsibility for pleasure- feeling good or better- to something or someone outside of us (e.g. medicine, therapist). In other words, the ego is invested in us believing that it was a virus that made me sick, and a special cold and flu medicine that made me better. Anything but recognise the mind was responsible for both body states.
THEORETICALLY, ANY-THING & NO-THING, MAY BE HELPFUL SO FIND WHAT WORKS
World-based forms of help are like magic tricks because they were specifically designed to hide what is really happening behind the illusion- the mind’s decision-making power. This is why all kinds of treatments may seem to be effective in healing different illnesses and ailments in different people. Sometimes it’s conventional medicine, sometimes it’s herbal concoctions, sometimes it’s “holy water”, sometimes it’s energy healing, acupuncture, therapy, and all manner of different things.
Sometimes it is just the belief that something will be beneficial that seems responsible for making us better, as verified by the placebo effect. This phenomenon attests to the fact that your expectations alone are capable of restoring health. Your mind alone is indeed always responsible for healing. It’s just that it usually accomplishes this in the world by instilling in something external with the belief that it has the power to heal.
There’s no guarantee that any one particular treatment or placebo will necessarily work 100% of the time for every single person with the same illness. This is precisely because whether magic seems to work depends solely on whether the mind has given it ‘permission’ to work.
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