The Psychotherapy Supplement to ACIM (part 5) ~ "The Process of Illness"

IV. The Process of Illness
1. As all therapy is psychotherapy, so all illness is mental illness. ²It is a judgment on the Son of God, and judgment is a mental activity. ³Judgment is a decision, made again and again, against creation and its Creator. ⁴It is a decision to perceive the universe as you would have created it. ⁵It is a decision that truth can lie and must be lies. ⁶What, then, can illness be except an expression of sorrow and of guilt? ⁷And who could weep but for his innocence?
2. Once God’s Son is seen as guilty, illness becomes inevitable. ²It has been asked for and will be received. ³And all who ask for illness have now condemned themselves to seek for remedies that cannot help, because their faith is in the illness and not in salvation. ⁴There can be nothing that a change of mind cannot effect, for all external things are only shadows of a decision already made. ⁵Change the decision, and how can its shadow be unchanged? ⁶Illness can be but guilt’s shadow, grotesque and ugly since it mimics deformity. ⁷If a deformity is seen as real, what could its shadow be except deformed?
3. The descent into hell follows step by step in an inevitable course, once the decision that guilt is real has been made. ²Sickness and death and misery now stalk the earth in unrelenting waves, sometimes together and sometimes in grim succession. ³Yet all these things, however real they seem, are but illusions. ⁴Who could have faith in them once this is realized? ⁵And who could not have faith in them until he realizes this? ⁶Healing is therapy or correction, and we have said already and will say again, all therapy is psychotherapy. ⁷To heal the sick is but to bring this realization to them.
4. The word “cure” has come into disrepute among the more “respectable” therapists of the world, and justly so. ²For not one of them can cure, and not one of them understands healing. ³At worst, they but make the body real in their own minds, and having done so, seek for magic by which to heal the ills with which their minds endow it. ⁴How could such a process cure? ⁵It is ridiculous from start to finish. ⁶Yet having started, it must finish thus. ⁷It is as if God were the devil and must be found in evil. ⁸How could love be there? ⁹And how could sickness cure? ¹⁰Are not these both one question?
5. At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the “healers” of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. ²But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself. ³This has some merit in a world where “degrees of error” is a meaningful concept. ⁴Yet must their cures remain temporary, or another illness rise instead, for death has not been overcome until the meaning of love is understood. ⁵And who can understand this without the Word of God, given by Him to the Holy Spirit as His gift to you?
6. Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense. ²Yet if such were really the self, defense would be impossible. ³Therefore, the defenses sought for must be magical. ⁴They must overcome all limits perceived in the self, at the same time making a new self-concept into which the old one cannot return. ⁵In a word, error is accepted as real and dealt with by illusions. ⁶Truth being brought to illusions, reality now becomes a threat and is perceived as evil. ⁷Love becomes feared because reality is love. ⁸Thus is the circle closed against the “inroads” of salvation.
7. Illness is therefore a mistake and needs correction. ²And as we have already emphasized, correction cannot be achieved by first establishing the “rightness” of the mistake and then overlooking it. ³If illness is real it cannot be overlooked in truth, for to overlook reality is insanity. ⁴Yet that is magic’s purpose; to make illusions true through false perception. ⁵This cannot heal, for it opposes truth. ⁶Perhaps an illusion of health is substituted for a little while, but not for long. ⁷Fear cannot long be hidden by illusions, for it is part of them. ⁸It will escape and take another form, being the source of all illusions.
8. Sickness is insanity because all sickness is mental illness, and in it there are no degrees. ²One of the illusions by which sickness is perceived as real is the belief that illness varies in intensity; that the degree of threat differs according to the form it takes. ³Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. ⁴This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. ⁵But the insane believe it because they are insane.
See here for more: acim.org/acim/psychotherapy/t...

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Thanks, brother! 💫🤩💫