It will
be as though millions of us ar e stopped at that r ed light,
recognizing our lovelessness and asking that we be healed. When the cur e for AIDS is ﬁnally found, we will give prizes to
a few scientists, but many of us will know that millions and
millions of prayers helped it happen. 4. SA VING THE MIND, SA VING THE BOD Y
“Only salvation can be said to cur e.”
The e xperience of illness is a call to a genuinely r eligious
life. In that sense, it is for many people one of the best
things that ever happened to them.One of the pr oblems with illness is that it str ongly tempts
us to obsess about the body at the very time when we need
most to concentrate on spirit. It tak es spiritual discipline to
turn that ar ound. Spiritual practice is mental and emotional
exercise, not unlik e physical exercise in the way it works. Through spiritual work we ar e seeking to r ebuild our mental
musculatur e. We achieve so little, says A Course in Miracles ,
because we have undisciplined minds. T raining our minds to
think fr om a loving, faithful perspective is the gr eatest boost
we can give to our immune systems, and one of the
greatest challenges we can pose to our minds. Changing our lives can be diﬃcult. F or a person who has
been diagnosed with a physical ailment, the call to change
is imperative. Wher e we used to eat unhealthy foods, we
must now eat healthy ones. Wher e we used to smok e, drink,
or get too little sleep, we must now change those habits. And wher e our minds used to run instinctively in the
directions of fear, paranoia and attack, we must now do
everything possible to train our minds to think diﬀer ently. The body -mind connection might be new to W ester n
science, but it is not new to Easter n medicine, or to the
ﬁelds of r eligion and philosophy . The body has an
intelligence of its own. As Deepak Chopra writes in Quantum
Healing , “Life itself is intelligence riding everywher e on
chemicals. W e mustn’t mak e the mistak e of thinking that
the rider and the horse ar e the same.” In the traditional
Wester n model of healing, we ar e trying to get the horse to
move in a new dir ection, without considering having a
conversation with the horse’s driver . A spiritual, holistic
notion of healing includes tr eatment not only of the body,
but of the mind and spirit as well. As Chopra writes, “W e
have ultimately arrived at a dramatic shif t in world view . For
the ﬁrst time in the history of science, mind has a visible
scaﬀold to stand upon. Befor e this, science declar ed that weare physical machines that somehow lear ned to think. Now
it dawns that we ar e thoughts that have lear ned to cr eate a
physical machine.”
Love changes the way we think about our disease. Illness
comes fr om separation, says A Course in Miracles , and
healing comes fr om joining. Of course people hate their
cancer, or hate their AIDS, but the last thing a sick person
needs is something else to hate about themselves. Healing
results fr om a transfor med per ception of our r elationship to
illness, one in which we r espond to the pr oblem with love
instead of fear . When a child pr esents a cut ﬁnger to his or
her mother, the woman doesn’t say, “ Bad cut.” R ather, she
kisses the ﬁnger, showers it with love in an unconscious,
instinctive activation of the healing pr ocess. Why should we
think diﬀer ently about critical illness? Cancer and AIDS and
other serious illnesses ar e physical manifestations of a
psychic scr eam, and their message is not “ Hate me,” but
“Love me.”
If I’m yelling, the person in fr ont of me can r eact in one of
two ways. He can yell back, scr eaming at me to shut up, but
this will tend to mak e me scr eam mor e. Or he can tell me
that he car es what my feelings ar e and he loves me and is
sorry that I’m feeling this way, which will tend to quiet me
down. Those ar e our two choices with critical illness. Attacking disease is not a cur e. Attacking a disease only
makes it yell louder . Healing comes fr om entering into a
conversation with our illness, seeking to understand what
it’s trying to tell us. The physician seeks to understand the
chemical alphabet thr ough which illness speaks. The
metaphysician seeks to understand what the illness is trying
to say . Lucifer is seen to have been the most beautiful angel in
Heaven befor e he “ fell.” In Star W ars, Darth V ader tur ns outto have been a nice guy at an earlier time. Disease is love
turned into fear—our own ener gy, meant to sustain us,
turned against ourselves. Ener gy cannot be destr oyed. Our
job is not to kill disease, but to tur n its ener gy back in the
direction it came fr om—to tur n fear back into love. Visualization has become a popular technique for the
treatment of critical illnesses. P eople of ten visualize a P AC
man, or soldier with a machine gun, setting out to destr oy
the thr eatening cells or virus. But we can tak e a mor e loving
approach. Under neath Darth V ader’s ugly mask lay a r eal
man with a r eal heart. AIDS, for instance, can be thought of
as “Angels-In-Darth V ader-Suits.”
Here are some enlightened visualizations: Imagine the
AIDS virus as Darth V ader, and then unzip his suit to allow
an angel to emer ge. See the cancer cell or AIDS virus in all
its wounded hor ror, and then see a golden light, or angel, or
Jesus, enveloping the cell and transfor ming it fr om darkness
into light. As we said befor e, a scr eam r esponds best to
love. That is when it calms down. That is when it stops. I have used an inter esting letter -writing technique in my
work, wher e people write a letter to AIDS or cancer or
whatever illness they might have, and tell it everything they
feel. The letter begins,
for instance:
Dear Cancer,
These ar e my honest feelings. ….. …..Signed,
Ed
And then we wr ote a letter back, to Ed fr om AIDS. Dear Ed,
These ar e my honest feelings. …..
….. Signed,
AIDS
The following letters wer e written in one of my AIDS
workshops:
Dear AIDS,
I used to hate you. I was confused and
afraid to accept the idea of death and
sickness. I believed the newsprint and TV,
doctors, and all of that fear that others tried
to lay into me on a daily basis. However,
today I ﬁnd I’m not dead thr ee and a half
years later, and even with all these medical
problems, I’m mor e alive today than ever . I’m
a grown-up thanks to your appearance in my
life. Y ou’ve given me a r eason to live and I
love you for it. My friends ar e sick or dead but
I’m not them. I’m me. And I do not feel
threatened or afraid of something that wasonce an enemy and has now become my
strength. Steve
Dear Steve,
If I was, as they say, out to get you, don’t
you think you’d be dead by now? I’m not able
to kill, har m, or mak e you sick. I have no
brain, brute str ength or gr eat har ming for ce. I’m just a virus. Y ou give me the power you
should give to God. I tak e what I can because
I don’t want to die any mor e than you do . Yes,
I live oﬀ your fears. But I die fr om your peace
of mind, ser enity, honesty, faith and desir e to
live. Sincer ely,
The AIDS virus
Dear AIDS,
I am so afraid of dying young. I am so afraid
of going to the hospital and having all these
needles and things stuck in me. I am so afraid
of pain. Why do you have to do this to me and
my friends? What did we ever do to mak e you
mad at us and want to hurt us? If ther e is
something you ar e trying to tell us, can’t you
tell us in a diﬀer ent way? I miss my friends. Why did you have to kill them? Why did you
have to cause them such physical pain? Sometimes I’m so angry at you but right nowI’m not angry . I’m just sad. I’m confused. I
don’t know what to do to calm you down. So
far you’ve lef t me alone, but why, and for how
long? John is such a gentle person. Why must
he suﬀer? If it’s love you want, we can love
you. If you have any doubts, look at the love
surrounding this disease. Please answer soon. Tell us what you want. I feel lik e we don’t have
much time but I’m willing to listen and lear n.
Thank you. Carl
Dear Carl,
I don’t understand this any better than you
do. I don’t mean you and your loved ones any
harm. I’m just trying to e xist, just lik e you,
doing it in the best way I know how . Unfortu nately, it ends up hurting people. I just
want love, just lik e you do . I’m crying out but
no one seems to hear me. Maybe if we try
listening to each other and talking to each
other, we can ﬁnd a way to e xist in peace
without hurting each other . Right now, I feel
like you only want to destr oy me rather than
dealing with whatever it is inside of you that
brought me her e. Please don’t hate me and
try to destr oy me. L ove me. Let’s talk and listen to each other and try to
live in peace. Thanks. AIDSDear HIV,
A little over eleven years ago you blew into
town. Everything has changed since that
time. Many people have lef t because of you. I
really miss them a lot. Ther e has been so
much pain and suﬀering because of you. On a
conscious level, no one wanted you. I myself
have been personally dealing with you too
long alr eady. Back in ’87 and ’88, you almost
took me out. I just thought you might lik e to
know that it is 1991 now and I’m still ar ound
and so ar e you. Isn’t it about time we stop this
bullshit and become friends? L et’s put the
past behind us and gr ow forwar d together . I
have tried to love you as best I can, but
sometimes I r eally have diﬃculty doing so . Please, let’s be friends and mak e up. Love always,
Paul
Dear P aul,
Okay. Love,
HIV
Dear AIDS,
I’m really pissed oﬀ! Why do I have to wor ry
about you and death when I’m only 26? I want
to know I’ll be alive for my ten- year classreunion, but no—it’s a big maybe. I’m also
sick of wor rying that every cold I get or sleep
patter n that’s diﬀer ent is a sign of the end
coming. I’m tir ed of wor rying about others
ﬁnding out. Get out of my body . I don’t want
you her e! That’s all. Russ
Dear R uss,
Both you and I don’t know how we came to
be, but we’r e her e together . I would be glad to
go, but that door is not open to me. Hey, I’ve
given you a perspective on life and death
most people your age never think about! Work with me, we’ll get thr ough this. AIDS
Dear AIDS,
I, like lots of other people, have been
through so much pain and so many changes,
both physically and mentally . Now, yes, ther e
is a gr eat part inside me who is very angry
and sad. It feels lik e a big nightmar e. Yes, I
must have done something to cause this
disease. But what a wound to be punished lik e
this. I must say, I do not lik e all the pain I’ve
gone thr ough with this crazy disease, and I
don’t lik e the suﬀering it has put me thr ough
mentally . But I pray daily . PeterDear P eter,
I’m in your body and yes I am a virus and
yes I have caused you a gr eat deal of
discomfort. But I do assur e you that the power
of your mind does mak e a diﬀer ence. Y ou
know if it did not, you would not be her e. Yes,
I have alter ed your life in some ways, but in
some ways positively . Your mind is much mor e
powerful than I am. AIDS
Dear AIDS,
I hate the uncertainty . But I feel thankful for
the kick in the butt this was in my life, and to
those ar ound me. Y ou made me ﬁnd the
strength I always had, and made me see the
love those ar ound me could show . You made
us all lear n to appr eciate every day and the
strength I was capable of . I know I k eep
saying str ength, but it’s true, AIDS gave me
strength. This is because when you ﬁnd out
your biggest fear in life comes true and you
can still move on, fear no longer has any
strength. Thank you for helping me stop
beating up on myself and hating what I
wasn’t, and making me love what I am. Andrew
Dear Andr ew,
You’re welcome.AIDS
Dear AIDS virus,
Go to Hell. Y ou took a shining star fr om my
family . I miss him and loved him and I never
told him. Why do you invade us in our prime? Why do you strik e with such vengeance? I
hate the pain and agony you cause, but
somehow you br ought out the best in L eo and
the best in his family . Inez
Dear Inez,
I didn’t bring out the worst or best. I just
am. And how you live with me is up to each of
you. AIDS
I suggest to every person dealing with a serious illness in
themselves or others, that they consider starting a jour nal in
which they “communicate” with their illness. Seeing
sickness as our own love that needs to be r eclaimed, is a
more positive appr oach to healing than is seeing the
sickness as something hideous we must get rid of . Ener gy
cannot be destr oyed. It can, however, be miraculously
transfor med. That miracle emer ges fr om our own thoughts,
our own decision to let go our belief in fear and danger, and
to embrace instead, a view of the world that is based on
hope and love. Ther e is certainly nothing to lose, no risk in
trying. “The A tonement is so gentle you need but whisper toit and all its power will rush to your assistance and support.”
God does His part when we do ours. 5. THE BOD Y IN RELA TIONSHIPS
“The body does not separate you fr om your
brother, and if you think it does you ar e insane .”
Our r eal identity lies not in our body, but in our spirit. “The
Christ in you inhabits not a body,” says the Course. Neither
is another person’s body who they r eally ar e, either . The
body is an illusionary wall that appears to separate us, the
ego’s chief device in trying to convince us that we ar e
separate fr om each other and separate fr om God. The Course calls the body “the central ﬁgur e in the
dreaming of the world.” The human storyline, wher e bodies
talk and move and suﬀer and die, for ms a veil of unr eality in
front of God’s cr eation. It hides “the face of Christ.” My
brother might lie, but he is not that lie. My br others might
ﬁght, but they r emain joined in love. “Minds ar e joined,” says the Course, but “bodies ar e
not.” The body of itself is nothing. It cannot for give, it
cannot see, and it cannot communicate. “If you choose to
see the body you behold a world of separation, unr elated
things, and happenings that mak e no sense at all.”
“When you equate yourself with a body, you will always
experience depr ession,” says the Course. Equating another
person with a body will bring up the same anxiety . One of
the ways the body can be used to manufactur e depr ession
is thr ough loveless se x. Our se xual impulses become
canvases onto which we e xtend our love or pr oject our fear . When se x is of the Holy Spirit, it is a deepening ofcommunication. When it is of the ego, it is a substitute for
communication. The Holy Spirit uses se x to heal us; the ego
uses it to wound us. Sometimes we have thought that se x
with another person would cement the bond between us,
and instead it tur ned out to manufactur e mor e illusion and
anxiety than ther e was befor e. It is only when se x is a
vehicle for spiritual communion that it is truly loving, that it
joins us to another person. Then it is a sacr ed act. Holiness means the pr esence of a loving purpose, and in
that sense, the body and its accouter ments can be a holy
expression. Many spiritual seek ers have felt the need to
eschew all body -related things. But that can actually be as
ego-center ed as an overattachment to the physical. Anything used to spr ead joy and communicate love is a part
of God’s plan for salvation. When I was about twenty years old, I had my ﬁrst date
with a man in a suit. I had never befor e been pick ed up at
my house by a man wearing anything but bluejeans. When I
opened the door and saw a handsome man in a suit and a
beautiful over coat, my ﬁrst thought was that maybe he was
in the maﬁa! I went on the date and struggled for the entir e evening
with my conﬂicts about his war drobe. I couldn’t tell this
man, of course, that I was tur ned oﬀ by his gor geous
clothes! He was an Italian, and my ﬁrst e xposur e to a
European man’s sensibilities towar ds women. Y ears later I
would r emember what this man taught me. We started dating, and I had never known someone to
make such a fuss over me. He tr eated our nights out lik e
major events. Did I wish to see a play or a movie? Did I want
to go to this r estaurant, or that? What should he wear? I was
so surprised by what a big deal it was to him, whether hewore the blue shirt or the white. A t ﬁrst it annoyed me,
coming as I was fr om a sixties mentality that viewed all
such considerations as ir relevant. But I ultimately saw that
the central issue for him was that he wished to mak e me
happy . His dr essing up was a way to please me, a way of
communicating how much he car ed. Many years af ter that r elationship, I was walking thr ough
a clothing stor e with a boyfriend. He was look ing at two
jackets, and couldn’t decide which one to buy . When I
indicated which I lik ed, he acted almost as though I was his
mother—he would pr ove to me that my opinion wouldn’t
dictate his decision. I said to him, “That’s the diﬀer ence
between you and me. If I wer e buying clothes, your liking
something would mak e me mor e prone to buy it. What’s the
point of being in a r elationship with you if it doesn’t
motivate me to try to please you, to mak e your life mor e
pleasurable, to sweeten things for you?”
That’s the only purpose for mak e-up, or clothes, or
anything else in the world of for m. Their point is not to
seduce another person, but to add light to the world in the
form of beauty and pleasur e. The meaning in things is how
much we use them to contribute happiness to the world. Clothes and other personal eﬀects ar e no diﬀer ent than any
other art for m. If we per ceive them lovingly, they can lif t the
vibrations and incr ease the ener gy in the world ar ound us. This is not nar cissism or vanity . Our not caring whether
the boyfriend or husband, girlfriend or wife r eally lik es the
outﬁt—that’s the nar cissism. I have had boyfriends who
were as adamant that they pr eferred me without mak e-up,
as others have been that they wanted me always to wear it. The change for me has had nothing to do with what kind of
men I dated, but with a shif t from “I don’t car e what he
wants,” to “I car e very much what mak es him happy .” Theﬁrst part of the se xual r evolution entailed women br eaking
from the oppressive patter ns of subservience to men. The
second part entails our r ecognition that ther e is no point in
developing individuality e xcept to then sur render it to a
higher identity . And the highest identity is our r elationship
with others. A life lived for oneself alone is not liberation,
but mer ely another for m of bondage. Since we ar e not
bodies, we do not e xist in isolation. Living as though we do
can only lead to pain. 6. VANITY , WEIGHT AND AGE
“The eyes of the body see only for m.”
What is vanity? What is the ego -oriented, neur otic obsession
with weight, hair, looks, and se x appeal that drives
Americans to spend billions of dollars a year on pr oducts
they can’t aﬀor d and don’t r eally need, and young women
to fall into danger ous disease patter ns in their eﬀorts to be
thin? These things ar e inevitable r esults of a cultural
orientation that leaves out the r eality of spirit. Concentration on the body as an end rather than a means in
our per ception, br eeds fear . Fear that we’r e not good
enough or attractive enough. F ear that they won’t lik e us. Fear that we’ll lose out in life. Ther e is no way to escape this
painful maelstr om without r eplacing body identiﬁcation with
the memory that we ar en’t bodies at all, that who we ar e is
the love inside us, and it is that love alone that deter mines
our value. When our minds ar e ﬁlled with light, ther e is no
room for darkness. When we understand who and what we
really ar e, ther e is no r oom for pain and confusion. When I was in my twenties, I had a pr oblem with weight
—not enough of a pr oblem to be called fat, but enough to
keep me miserable. Ther e was a pr oblematic ten to ﬁf teenpounds that I could never shak e. Anytime I went on a diet, I
ended up gaining weight. This mak es sense psychologically,
because if someone tells us not to think about the Eiﬀel
Tower, we’ll think about it all the time. T elling myself not to
think about food only made me mor e obsessed about it. Deprivation is a lousy way to lose weight. I used to pray
about my pr oblem and would r eceive the following
guidance: “Eat anything you want.” That sounded
thoroughly insane to me. “ But if I tell myself to do that,” I
thought, “then I’ll start eating and I’ll never stop.” T o that
my inter nal guidance r esponded, “Y es, you will do that at
ﬁrst. Y ou will have to compensate for all the pr essur e you’ve
been putting on yourself for years. And then you will have
had enough. Then you will r eturn to your natural r hythms. Then you will heal.”
So I let go . I met a woman who had lost a huge amount
of weight and told me she had ask ed God to do it for her . “I
didn’t ask that I lose weight,” she said. “I just ask ed that he
take the monk ey oﬀ my back. I didn’t even car e if I was fat. I
told Him that if He wanted me to be fat, to mak e me
comfortable with it. I just wanted out of this Hell.”
I decided that it didn’t matter how much I weighed. I
couldn’t tak e the hor ror of the obsession anymor e.
Becoming a student of A Course in Miracles , I began to
realize that how much I weighed didn’t matter . All that
matter ed was love. If I could train my mind to concentrate
more on that, then my pr oblems would disappear by
themselves. In the Easter n religions it is of ten said, “ Go for
God, and all that is not authentically you will dr op.” As I got
more involved with practicing the Course, I stopped thinking
so much about my weight. That was all. And one day I
looked in the mir ror and saw that it was gone.What I r ealized was that my weight had nothing to do
with my body, but with my mind. I was ter riﬁed of people,
and had unconsciously manufactur ed a wall ar ound myself
to protect me fr om them. I was ter riﬁed, however, because
of the love that I myself was not giving. My ego’s purpose
for the weight was to k eep me separate, and until I gave up
that purpose, I would never be able to give up the e xtra
pounds. My subconscious mind was mer ely following
instructions. As I began to put my ener gy into r eaching
across the wall, when I allowed the Christ to enter my mind,
the wall miraculously disappear ed. After lear ning in the Course that the body isn’t important,
I couldn’t understand why we should e xercise or eat well. What I lear ned was that, when I e xercise, I actually think
less about my body than when I don’t. When I don’t
exercise, I can’t help thinking about heavy thighs and a
thick waist. Similarly, the point of healthy food is that it
supports us in e xisting the most lightly and ener getically
within the body . It is heavier, unhealthy food that ties us to
the body . We tak e car e of the body as a way of taking better
care of the spirit. As we e xist today, an aging body r eﬂects the heaviness
of our pained and wor ried thoughts. As we begin to travel
more lightly within the body, and our minds give up our
constant pr eoccupation with body thoughts, aging becomes
a diﬀer ent e xperience. I r ead somewher e that the V irgin
Mary never aged, although she lived into her ﬁf ties. I can
see why . If we wer e to achieve a state in which only love
and caring ﬁlled our minds, and neither past nor futur e lay
as bur dens on our shoulders, aging would become a
youthing pr ocess. Spiritually, we should be getting younger
the older we get, since the only purpose of time is that we
learn to mor e consistently r elinquish our attachment toform. Then the body springs into perfect life, a healthy
instrument and a thing of joy . Part of our cultural neur osis has been an abhor rence of
age. Lik e anything else, age will only transfor m when we
have ﬁrst accepted it as it is. Many of us think age is so
terrible, so unappealing, so unse xy, when actually those ar e
just thoughts we have. W alking down the str eet in P aris,
French women in their ﬁf ties and sixties e xude a matur e
sexuality . Her e, we tend to hold the thought that women
that age ar e “over the hill.”
Let’s change our minds. L et’s r emember that the longer
we live, the mor e we know, and the mor e we know, the
more beautiful we ar e. We can actively cr eate a new conte xt
for the e xperience of aging by shif ting our outlook towar ds
older people in our society . The ego, af ter all, claims that a
diminished body is a diminished person. W e are a cold and
uncaring cultur e in our tr eatment of older Americans. In
China, elders ar e respected and r evered, which is a lar ge
part of why the Chinese live so long as healthy, pr oductive
citizens. W e have a thought in America that youth is better,
and so it is. Not because that is an objective truth, but only
because it is a thought we car ry and manifest as our
collective e xperience. No matter what the illness or addiction or distorted
physical e xpression, its cause is in the mind, and only ther e
can it be healed. The gr eatest power we’r e given, says the
Course, is the power to change our mind. Our physical
condition does not deter mine our emotional condition. The
experience of peace comes only fr om the mind. “ Peace of
mind,” says A Course in Miracles,  “is clearly an inter nal
matter .”7. THE MEANING OF HEALING
“Forget not that the healing of God’s Son is all
the world is for .”
When we think of healing, we usually think of physical
healing, but A Course in Miracles  deﬁnes health as “inner
peace.” Ther e are people e xperiencing critical ill ness who
are at peace, and people in perfect physical health who ar e
emotionally tortur ed. In his book Teach Only L ove, Jerry Jampolsk y sets forth
his principles of attitudinal healing. He teaches that peace is
possible r egardless of physical cir cumstances. In
surrendering our illness to God, we sur render the e xperience
in its entir ety, knowing that anything can be used by the
Holy Spirit to bring mor e love into our awar eness. Many people have spok en of their illnesses as a “ wake-up
call.” That means wak e up and e xperience life—wak e up
and bless each mor ning, wak e up and appr eciate friends
and family . I have hear d people with critical illnesses say
that their lives only r eally began when they wer e diagnosed. Why is that? Because whenever we ar e diagnosed with a
critical illness, much of our superﬁcial personal baggage is
dropped in the ﬁrst ﬁve minutes. Why do I act so ar rogantly? Why I am pr etending to be so tough? Why am I judging so
many people? Why am I not appr eciating all the love and
beauty that sur rounds me? Why am I avoiding the simplest
and most important element of my being, the love in my
heart? Dropping our illusions is a healing in itself . Within each of
us ther e is a cor e—our essence, our true being. That is the
place of God who is within us. F inding that essence is ourreturn to God. It is the purpose of our lives, and even our
most painful e xperiences can serve that purpose. Over the years, I have oﬃciated at many funerals and
memorial services. Some of the most impr essive sights I
have ever seen have been the grieving faces of people
confr onting a nak ed truth that cannot be denied or shoved
away . When someone we love is no longer with us, our
sadness opens us to new opportunities for gr owth. T ears can
be a gr eat sof tener . I recently oﬃciated at a funeral for a young man who had
died of AIDS. He was loved deeply by his friends, and many
people cried during the service. T owar ds the end of the
funeral, several of his closest friends stood up to sing a song
that they had of ten sung with him. Many of them could
barely keep fr om br eaking down as they sang. The pur e
heartbr eak r eﬂected in their faces was so stunning to see; I
kept thinking as I watched, that those among them who
were actors had pr obably never given such an honest
perfor mance. Another time, I oﬃciated at the funeral of a young
woman who had been brutally mur dered. She was mar ried
and the mother of a thr ee-year-old baby . I will never for get
the look on her husband’s face as he sat listening to me in
the chur ch. I said to him, “Michael, you will never be the
same, we all know that. Y ou have two choices: Y ou will
become har der or you will become sof ter. You will conclude
from this that no one, including God, is ever to be trusted
again, or you will allow your heartbr eak to so sof ten you—
you will allow your tears to so melt the walls that sur round
your heart—that you will become a man of rar e depth and
sensitivity .”Then I spok e to the women in the r oom. “This little boy
has lost his mother . This child no longer has a woman’s
arms ar ound him. Do not let this go uncor rected. Commit
now within your hearts to visit him, to visit his father, to
take up the slack as best you can, to become women of
matur e substance as of this moment. T ake this r esponsibility
seriously, that in this one thing, at least, the personal
growth br ought on by this darkness might be a way in which
it is cast out.”
Oddly enough, I had to leave that funeral to go acr oss
town wher e I was perfor ming a mar riage cer emony . As I
gave the service, I noticed a similarity between the eyes of
the gr oom and the eyes of the young man who had just
buried his wife. Of course the gr oom was not grieving, but
joyous. What look ed the same was the pur e unadulterated
love in his eyes, with no artiﬁcial ingr edients placed on top. Just listening, and nak edness, and openness, and love. Healing is a r eturn to love. Illness and death ar e often
painful lessons in how much we love, but they ar e lessons
nonetheless. Sometimes it tak es the knife that emotionally
pierces our heart, to pier ce the walls that lie in fr ont of it. One night in L os Angeles, during the meditation period
following my lectur e, I noticed two of my friends crying in
the back of the chur ch. They wer e in deep sor row over the
impending death of a mutual friend who had AIDS. It hurt
me to see them in so much pain. Suﬀering, I’ve found, gives
you X -ray vision into the suﬀering of others. “Can’t this bur den be lif ted?” I ask ed God. W e’d all seen
so much sor row, so much pain and death fr om this disease
by then. “Isn’t this enough? Can’t it all be over?”What occur red to me ne xt was striking. I was r eminded of
my own “dark night of the soul” almost a decade befor e.
Hadn’t I changed fr om my pain, in deep and ultimately
positive ways? If my soul had used that e xperience as a
path to gr eater awar eness of myself, how did I know that
these other people wer en’t doing the same? It isn’t my task
to judge—to help, in any and every way possible, yes, but
not to doubt the ultimate wisdom of all things. The gr eatest
gift we can give to a person in pain is to hold in our own
minds the thought that ther e is a light beyond this darkness. What goes on e xternally is only the tip of the iceber g in any
situation. The lessons, the r eal changes, the opportunities to
grow—these ar e things the body’s eyes can’t see. They
remain beneath the spiritual water line, but they ar e ther e.
And they r epresent a much mor e vast pictur e of the soul’s
journey than what we can see fr om the perspective of our
physical senses. Gr owth is not always about getting what
we think we want. Always, it’s about becoming the men and
women we have the potential to be. L oving, pur e, honest,
clear. A longer life is not necessarily a better life. A healthy life
is not deter mined by physical condition. Life is mer ely the
presence of love, and death is mer ely its absence. Physical
death is not r eal death at all. W e’re big enough now to
realize that ther e’s life beyond the physical. As we ﬁnd that
life, we gr ow into ourselves, as sons of men and as Sons of
God. 8. DEA TH AND REINCARNA TION
“There is no death. The Son of God is fr ee.”
A Course in Miracles  says that birth is not a beginning but a
continuation, and death is not an end but a continuation.Life goes on for ever. It always was and always will be. Physical incar nation is just one for m that life can tak e.
A Course in Miracles  mentions the Gr eat R ays, a concept
also found in other metaphysical teachings. The Gr eat R ays
are lines of ener gy that emanate fr om within each of us, on
subtler levels than our physical senses yet per ceive. Our
physical senses r eﬂect our cur rent belief system, and as our
belief system e xpands, so will our senses. Ther e will come a
time when we will physically per ceive the Gr eat R ays. Some
people, such as those who see auras, ar e already beginning
to. Buddha and Jesus and other enlightened masters ar e
often pictur ed with halos ar ound their heads or lines of light
radiating fr om their hearts. These lines of light and ener gy ar e our life for ce. The
body is mer ely a temporary encasement. Because we do not
yet realize this, we think that the death of the body is the
death of the person. It is not. Ther e was a time when people
thought that the earth was ﬂat, and so ships that r eached
the horizon wer e believed to have fallen oﬀ the face of the
earth. Ther e will come a time when our pr esent per ception
of death will seem as quaint and ignorant and old-fashioned
as that. The spirit does not die when the body dies. Physical
death is lik e taking oﬀ a suit of clothes. To the ego, r eality is only what we can per ceive
physically . But many things that we know to e xist cannot be
seen with the nak ed eye—neither atoms nor pr otons nor
viruses nor cells. Scientists ar e now beginning to r ecognize
a oneness that lies beyond all per ceived r eality . This
oneness is God, and our beingness lies within it. Physical incar nation is a classr oom e xperience, and souls
come to the class to lear n what they need to lear n. It’s
much lik e tuning in to a channel on a television. L et’s saywe’re all tuned to Channel 4. When someone dies, they’r e
no longer on Channel 4, but that doesn’t mean they’r e not
broadcasting. They’r e now on channel 7 or 8. Cable systems
exist r egardless of whether or not we have the cable
equipment with which to r eceive them. It is only the
arrogance of the ego that would have us believe that what
we can’t physically per ceive must not e xist. People have r eported seeing a light e xiting thr ough the
top of the head of a dying person. Many people have also
spoken of their “ near-death e xperiences,” wher e the
physical body is let go temporarily . I once met a young
woman who had been in a major plane crash. She lost over
half the blood in her body and her legs wer e almost
completely sever ed. In describing her e xperience to me, she
said, “I died and then came back. It felt seductive, very
warm, lik e a wonderful motherly love. But I knew I had a
choice. I thought of my father, and I knew my death would
be unbearable for him, so I fought and came back. “I never cry at funerals anymor e,” she said. I can cry for
the people who ar e left here, but I know fr om my e xperience
that the people who died ar e in a wonderful place.”
Once the Gr eat R ays ar e register ed by our physical
senses, the body will seem to be a mer e shadow in fr ont of
our true selves. When we hear that someone has died, it will
merely mean that a shadow has been r emoved. Death will
no longer be per ceived as the end of a r elationship. When
Jesus said, ‘Death shall be the last enemy,’ he meant that ‘it
shall be the last thing we per ceive as an enemy .’ The
problem is not r eally death, but what we think death is. W e
will all die. Some of us will tak e the 9:30, and some of us will
be on the 10:07, but we ar e all headed out. A ccepting a
healing of our thoughts about what that means is acornerstone in our transfor mation fr om body to spirit
orientation. Life is lik e a book that never ends. Chapters close, but
not the book itself . The end of one physical incar nation is
like the end of a chapter, on some level setting up the
beginning of another . I once hear d a friend say, “My
relationship with my father has only impr oved since his
death.”
A Course in Miracles  says that communication does not
stop with the destruction of the physical body . True
communication r ests on mor e than what is said or hear d
physically . When someone has died, we must speak with
them diﬀer ently than we did befor e, but in staying open to
the possibility of an eter nal life for ce, we dir ect our minds to
develop the capacity for a transphysical conversation. Letter-writing can help foster such communication. F irst
we write a letter to the person who has died, and then we
write another letter back, fr om them to us. What is the point
of such e xercises? They e xpand the mind to accept gr eater
possibilities than the ego nor mally allows us to consider . People in my grief support gr oups have of ten told me that
they had had a dr eam about someone who had died. When
the “dead” person had shown up in the dr eam, the dr eamer
would say “Y ou can’t be her e. You’re dead.” A t that point,
the person would say, “ Oh,” and the dr eam would end. It
had been denied per mission to continue. Writing the letters, or having any other kind of
conversation or e xperience that br oadens our openness to
the possibility of life beyond death, str etches our
selﬁmposed mental boundaries. Our dr eams and other
emotional e xperiences then become fr eed fr om the bondage
of our r efusal to believe. Sometimes when someone hasdied we say, “This isn’t happening. It feels unr eal. I feel lik e
they’r e still her e.” That’s because they ar e. Although the
ego voices of the world will say, “It’s just your imagination,”
the truth is that it is death itself that is “just our
imagination.” The truth as God cr eated it is that death does
not e xist, and deep in our hearts we know that this is true. What about r eincar nation? The following is fr om the
chapter on r eincar nation in the T eacher’s Manual of the
Course:
“In the ultimate sense, r eincar nation is
impossible. Ther e is no past or futur e, and the
idea of birth into a body has no meaning either
once or many times. R eincar nation cannot, then,
be true in any r eal sense…. If [the concept] is
used to str engthen the r ecognition of the eter nal
natur e of life, it is helpful indeed…. Lik e many
other beliefs, it can be bitterly misused. A t least,
such misuse oﬀers pr eoccupation and per haps
pride in the past. A t worst, it induces inertia in
the pr esent…. Ther e is always some risk in
seeing the pr esent in ter ms of the past. Ther e is
always some good in any thought which
strengthens the idea that life and the body ar e
not the same .”
Technically then, r eincar nation doesn’t e xist in quite the
way we think of it simply because ther e is no linear time. If
we have past lives, or futur e lives, then they’r e all
happening at once. Still, it’s helpful to be r eminded that we
have a life separate fr om the e xperience of any one physical
lifetime. A Course in Miracles  has no doctrine. An advanced
student of the Course may or may not believe in
reincar nation. ‘The only meaningful question is whether a
concept is helpful.’ W e are told to ask our own Inter nalTeacher for guidance in our thinking about any idea and its
use in our lives. In the enlightened world, we will still dr op the body . But
death will be e xperienced very diﬀer ently. It is written in
“The Song of P rayer,” an e xtension of A Course in Miracles :
“This is what death should be; a quiet choice,
made joyfully and with a sense of peace,
because the body has been kindly used to help
the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it
has given us. But we ar e thankful, too, the need
is done to walk the world of limits, and to r each
the Christ in hidden for m and clearly seen at
most in lovely ﬂashes. Now we can behold Him
without blinders, in the light that we have
learned to look upon again . We call it death, but it is liberty . It does not come
in for ms that seem to be thrust down in pain
upon unwilling ﬂesh, but as a gentle welcome to
release. If ther e has been true healing, this can
be the for m in which death comes when it is
time to r est a while fr om labor gladly done and
gladly ended. Now we go in peace to fr eer air
and gen tler climate, wher e it is not har d to see
the gif ts we gave wer e saved for us. F or Christ is
clear er now; His vision mor e sustained in us; His
voice, the wor d of God, mor e certainly our own . This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind
forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be
received with thankfulness .”I once r ead of an ancient Japanese r eligion that
celebrated when people died, and mour ned when they wer e
born. It was understood that birth meant the for cing of an
inﬁnite spirit into a ﬁnite focus, while death meant the
release of all limits and the fr eedom to live the full range of
possibilities that God in His mer cy oﬀers us. Life is much mor e than the life of the body; it is an
inﬁnite e xpanse of ener gy, a continuum of love in countless
dimensions, a psychological and spiritual e xperience
independent of physical for m. W e have been alive for ever. We will be alive for ever mor e. But the life of the body is an
important classr oom. It is our opportunity to deliver the
world fr om Hell. “ Dear God, may your will be done, on earth
as it is in Heaven.”
OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 9
Heaven
“Heaven is her e. Ther e is nowher e else. Heaven
is now . Ther e is no other time .”
 
1. THE DECISION TO BE HAPPY
“Heaven is a decision I must mak e.”
‘God’s will is that we be happy’ now . In asking that God’s
will be done, we ar e instructing our minds to focus on the
beauty in life, to see all the r easons to celebrate instead of
mour n.
Usually we ﬁgur e out what we think would mak e us
happy, and then try to mak e those things happen. But
happiness isn’t cir cumstance-dependent. Ther e are people
who have every r eason in the world to be happy who ar en’t. There are people with genuine pr oblems who ar e. The k ey to
happiness is the decision to be happy . There has been a lot of talk in the last few years about
“allowing our feelings.” It’s an important concept, but one
that can be used by the ego for its own purposes. Most of
the time, when we hear someone say “ feel your feelings,”they mean feel the negative ones: “ Feel your pain,” “ feel
your anger,” “ feel your shame.” But we need support in
feeling our positive feelings just as much as we need
support in feeling our negative ones. It is the e xperience of
genuine emotion of any kind that the ego r esists. W e need
support and per mission to feel our love, to feel our
satisfaction and to feel our happiness. The ego does hidden battle against happiness. I
remember when I was in college, walking ar ound with books
of Russian poetry under my ar m, cultivating what I felt was
a sophisticated, cynical fr own worthy of my intellectual
prowess. I felt it indicated that I understood the human
condition. Ultimately I r ealized that my cynicism r evealed
very little understanding of the human condition, because
the most important facet of that condition is that we ar e
always at choice. W e can always choose to per ceive things
diﬀer ently. There is an old cliche, “Y ou can see the glass half empty,
or you can see it half full.” Y ou can focus on what’s wr ong in
your life, or you can focus on what’s right. But whatever you
focus on, you’r e going to get mor e of. Creation is an
extension of thought. Think lack, and you get lack. Think
abundance, and you get mor e.
“But when I’m going on lik e everything’s gr eat, I’m not
being honest with myself,” I can hear the voices say . But the
negative self is not our honest self; rather, it is the impostor . We need to be in touch with our negative feelings, but only
in order to r elease them and feel the love which lies
beneath them. It’s not so diﬃcult to feel positive feelings or think
positive thoughts. The pr oblem is that we r esist them. They
make us feel guilty . To the ego, ther e is no gr eater crimethan claiming our natural inheritance. If I’m rich, says the
ego, someone else will be poor . If I become successful,
someone’s feelings might get hurt. Who am I to have it all? I’ll be a thr eat and people won’t lik e me anymor e. These ar e
some of the ar guments the ego spews into our
consciousness. The Course admonishes us to bewar e the
danger of a hidden belief . A hidden belief that many of us
hold is that ther e is something wr ong with being too happy . The ego’s r eligious dogma hasn’t helped. Suﬀering has
been gloriﬁed. P eople have focused on the cruciﬁxion mor e
than the r esurrection. But cruciﬁxion without the
resurrection is a meaningless symbol. Cruciﬁxion is the
energy patter n of fear, the manifestation of a closed heart. Resurrection is the r eversal of that patter n, brought about
by a shif t in thought fr om fear to love. Look at the cruciﬁxion, says A Course in Miracles , but do
not dwell upon it. “ Blessed ar e those who have faith who
cannot see,” says Jesus. It’s easy to have faith when things
are going well. But ther e are times in everyone’s life when
we have to ﬂy on instruments, just lik e a pilot making a
landing in low visibility . He knows the land is ther e, but he
can’t see it. He must trust his instruments to navigate for
him. And so it is with us, when things ar en’t what we’d lik e
them to be. W e know that life is always in pr ocess, and
always on its way to greater good. W e just can’t see that. During those times, we r ely on our spiritual radar to
navigate for us. W e trust ther e’s a happy ending. By our
faith, thr ough our trust, we invok e its pr oof. Resurrection is actively called forth. It r epresents the
decision to see light in the midst of darkness. In the T almud,
the Jewish book of wisdom, the Jew is told how to behave in
the midst of dark times. “ During the time of the dark estnight,” says the T almud, “act as if the mor ning has alr eady
come.”
God pr ovides the answer to every pr oblem the moment it
occurs. T ime, as we’ve alr eady seen, is just a thought. It is
the physical r eﬂection of our faith or faithlessness. If we
think it’s going to tak e time for a wound to heal, it will. If we
accept God’s will as alr eady accomplished, we e xperience
the healing of all wounds immediately . As cited in the
Course, “ Only inﬁnite patience pr oduces immediate r esults.”
The universe is cr eated to support us in every way . God is
constantly e xpressing His inﬁnite car e for us. The only
problem is, we don’t agr ee with Him. W e don’t love
ourselves as He loves us, and so we block our e xperience of
the miracles to which we’r e entitled. The world has taught us we ar e less than perfect. In fact,
we have been taught that it’s ar rogant to think we’r e
deserving of total happiness. This is the point wher e we’r e
stuck. If anything comes into our lives—love, success,
happiness—which seems lik e it would be suited to a
“deserving” person, our subconscious mind concludes it
can’t possibly be for us. And so we sabotage. F ew people
have wr onged us lik e we’ve wr onged ourselves. No one has
snatched the candy away fr om us lik e we’ve thr own it away
from ourselves. W e have been unable to accept joy because
it doesn’t match who we think we ar e.
In contrast to the ego’s meager appraisal of our worth,
stands truth as God cr eated it. Ther e is no light mor e bright
than the light that shines within us. Whether or not we see
that light is ir relevant. It’s ther e because God placed it
there. It is not only our right, but in a way, our r esponsibility to
be happy . God doesn’t pr ovide any of us with happiness thatis only meant for us alone. When God sends us happiness,
he does so in or der that we might then stand up mor e fully
in the world on His behalf . Happiness is a sign that we have accepted God’s will. It’s
a lot easier to fr own than to smile. It’s easy to be cynical. In
fact, it’s an e xcuse for not helping the world. Whenever
people say to me, “Marianne, I’m so depr essed about world
hunger,” I say to them, “ Do you give ﬁve dollars a month to
one of the or ganizations that feed the hungry?” The r eason I
ask is that I have noticed that people who participate in the
solution to pr oblems, don’t seem to ﬁnd themselves as
depressed about those pr oblems as do people standing on
the sidelines doing nothing. Hope is bor n of participation in
hopeful solutions. W e are happy to the e xtent that we
choose to notice and to cr eate the r easons for happiness. Optimism and happiness ar e the r esults of spiritual work. A Course in Miracles  states, “ Love waits on welcome, not
on time.” Heaven mer ely awaits our acceptance. It is not
something we’ll e xperience “later .” “Later ” is just a thought. “Be of good cheer,” said Jesus “ for I have over come the
world.” He r ealized, and so can we all, that the world has no
power befor e the power of God. It is not r eal. It is only an
illusion. God has cr eated love as the only r eality, the only
power . And so it is. 2. OUR CAP ACITY FOR BRILLIANCE
“You can str etch out your hand and r each to
Heaven .”
In the eyes of God, we’r e all perfect and we have unlimited
capacity to e xpress brilliantly . I say unlimited capacity rather
than unlimited potential, because potential can be adanger ous concept. W e can use it to tyrannize ourselves, to
live in the futur e instead of in the pr esent, to set ourselves
up for despair by constantly measuring ourselves against
what we think we could be rather than what we ar e. Until
we’re perfect masters, it is by deﬁnition impossible to live
up to our potential. Our potential always r emains something
we’re only capable of living later . Potential is a concept that can bind us to personal
powerlessness. F ocus on human potential r emains impotent
without a focus on human capacity . Capacity is e xpressed in
the pr esent. It is immediate. The k ey to it lies not in what we
have inside of us, but rather in what we ar e willing to own
that we have inside of us. Ther e is no point in waiting until
we ar e perfect in what we do, or enlightened masters, or
Ph.D.s in life, befor e opening ourselves to what we’r e
capable of doing now . Of course, we’r e not as good today as
we’ll be tomor row, but how will we ever get to tomor row’s
promise without making some sort of move today? I
remember spending years of my life so upset about the life
choices I felt I had available, that I never moved. I was
paralyzed by all the possibilities. I couldn’t ﬁgur e out which
road would lead me to the fulﬁllment of my ‘potential”; this
glorious neur otic myth that lay always just in fr ont of
anything I could manifest now . So I was always too scar ed to
move. And fear, of course, is the gr eat betrayer of Self . The
diﬀer ence between those people “living their potential” and
those who don’t, is not the amount of potential itself, but
the amount of per mission they give themselves to live in the
present. We are the adult generation. W e have adult bodies, adult
responsibilities, and adult car eers. What many of us lack is
an adult conte xt for our lives, one in which we give
ourselves per mission to shine, to blossom fully, to show up
powerfully in the pr esent without fearing that we’re notgood enough. W aiting for a powerful futur e is a way of
making sur e it never gets her e. An adolescent dr eams of
what will be. An adult tak es joy in today . I once had a therapist who told me that my pr oblem was
that I wanted to move dir ectly fr om point A to point x,y and
z. She pointed out that I seemed incapable of moving fr om
point A to point B, of putting one foot in fr ont of another . It’s
much easier to dr eam about point Z than to actually move
to point B. It’s easier to practice our Oscar acceptance
speech, than to get up and go to acting class. We’re often afraid to do anything unless we know we can
do it e xtremely well. But we get to Car negie Hall by
practicing. I r emember how fr eeing it was several years ago
to read in an interview with Joan Baez that some of Bob
Dylan’s early songs wer en’t so wonderful. W e have this
image of genius springing fully gr own out of Zeus’s
forehead. I once ask ed someone to lectur e for me while I
was out of town, and he answer ed that he felt he couldn’t
lectur e as well as I. “ Of course you can’t!” I said. “I’ve been
doing it for years! But how will you ever get great at it
unless you start doing it?” I think the r eason people don’t
have hobbies today as much as they did in past
generations, is because we can’t bear to do anything we’r e
not fabulous at. Several years ago I started taking piano
lessons again, af ter having played for many years as a child. Chopin, I’m not, but ther e was so much therapeutic value in
just playing. I saw very clearly that you don’t have to be a
virtuoso at everything you do, in or der to be a virtuoso at
life. V irtuosity in life means singing out—not necessarily
singing well. Most of us feel on some level lik e race horses champing
at the bit, pr essing at the gate, hoping and praying for
someone to open the door and let us run out. W e feel somuch pent up ener gy, so much lock ed up talent. W e know in
our hearts that we wer e bor n to do gr eat things, and we
have a deep-seated dr ead of wasting our lives. But the only
person who can fr ee us is ourselves. Most of us know that. We realize that the lock ed door is our own fear . But we have
learned by now, that on some level our ter ror of moving
forwar d is so gr eat that it would tak e a miracle to fr ee us. The ego would have us bor n with gr eat potential, and die
with gr eat potential. In between, ther e is ever -increasing
suﬀering. A miracle fr ees us to live fully in the pr esent, to
release our power and to claim our glory . The Son of God is
risen to Heaven when he r eleases the past, r eleases the
futur e, and thus r eleases himself to be who he is today . ‘Hell
is what the ego mak es of the pr esent.’ Heaven is another
take on the altogether . 3. SPIRITU AL PRACTICE
“An untrained mind can accomplish nothing .”
Love tak es mor e than crystals and rainbows, it tak es
discipline and practice. It’s not just a sweet sentiment fr om
a Hallmark car d. It is a radical commitment to a diﬀer ent
way of being, a mental r esponse to life that is completely at
odds with the thinking of the world. Heaven is a conscious
choice to def y the ego’s voice. The mor e time we spend with
the Holy Spirit, the gr eater our capacity is to focus on love. A Course in Miracles  tells us that ﬁve minutes spent with
Him in the mor ning (doing the W orkbook or any other
serious practice of prayer or meditation) guarantees that He
will be in char ge of our thought for ms thr oughout the day . What that means is that we tak e responsibility for making
what in Alcoholics Anonymous is called “conscious contact”
with Him. Just as we go to the gym to build up our physicalmusculatur e, so we meditate and pray to build up our
mental musculatur e. The Course says we achieve so little
because we have undisciplined minds: we instinctively go
into paranoid or judgmental, fearful r eactions instead of
loving ones. The Course says we ar e ‘far too indulgent of
mind-wandering.’ Meditation disciplines the mind.. When we meditate, our brains literally emit diﬀer ent
brain waves. W e receive infor mation at a deeper level than
we do during nor mal waking consciousness. A Course in
Miracles  says that its W orkbook is the crux of the Course,
because the ‘e xercises train our minds to think along the
lines the te xt sets forth. It’s not what  we think that
transfor ms us, but how we think.’ The principles of miracles
become “mental habits” in our “pr oblem-solving r epertoir e.”
Spiritual gr owth is not about becoming mor e
metaphysically complicated, but rather it is about gr owing
simpler, as these very basic principles begin to per meate
more and mor e deeply into our thought system. Meditation
is time spent with God in silence and quiet listening. It is the
time during which the Holy Spirit has a chance to enter into
our minds and perfor m His divine alchemy . What changes
because of this is not just what we do, but who we ar e.
In the W orkbook of A Course in Miracles , which is a 365-
day set of psychological e xercises, we ar e given a very
speciﬁc cur riculum for r elinquishing a thought system based
on fear and accepting instead a thought system based on
love. Each day, we ar e given a speciﬁc thought to focus on,
eyes closed, for a speciﬁc amount of time. W e’re even told
in the intr oduction that we don’t have to lik e the e xercises
and we might even be hostile to them, but we should just do
them. Our attitude doesn’t aﬀect their eﬃcacy in any way . If
I’m lif ting weights at the gym, I can either love the
experience or hate it, but it doesn’t r eally matter . All thataﬀects my body is whether or not I lif t the weights. So it is
with meditation. Also, as with physical e xercise, the eﬀects
of meditation ar e cumulative. When we go to the gym and
work out for an hour, we don’t r eally see any change in our
bodies at the end of the hour . If we go every day for thirty
days, however, then we do see a change. So it is with
meditation. And sometimes, we’r e not the ones who can see
the change as much as others can. W e might not even be
awar e of how much the quality of our ener gy, the invisible
emanations of our minds, aﬀect our envir onment and the
people within it. But others do . And they r espond
accor dingly . Spiritual practice supports the development of personal
power . Spiritually powerful people ar e not necessarily
people who do so much, as they ar e people ar ound whom
things get done. Gandhi caused the British to leave India,
but he wasn’t a man who ran ar ound a lot. P owerful for ces
swirled ar ound him. P resident K ennedy is another e xample. Legislatively, he achieved r elatively little, but he unleashed
invisible for ces within others that alter ed the consciousness
of at least one American generation. A t the highest level of
our being, we don’t do anything. W e are at r est when the
power of God works thr ough us. Meditation is a pr ofound
relaxation. The ego’s frantic voice, its vain imaginings, ar e
burned away . We all have within us a dir ect radio line to the voice for
God. The pr oblem is, the radio is full of static. In our quiet
times we spend with God, the static melts away . We lear n to
hear the small still voice for God. In Heaven, that is the only
voice we hear . That is why we ar e happy ther e.
4. SEEING THE LIGHT“Child or light, you know not that the light is in
you.”
Only the light within us is r eal. W e are not afraid of the dark
within ourselves, so much as we ar e afraid of the light. The
dark is familiar . It’s what we know . “Yet neither oblivion nor
hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven.” The light, the
thought that we might indeed be good enough, is such a
threat to the ego that it tak es out its very big guns to
defend against it. Someone I know r emark ed to me about a mutual friend,
“He has a mean-spirited soul.” “No, he doesn’t,” I r eplied. “He has a mean-spirited personality . His soul is one of the
brightest I’ve ever seen. His mean-spiritedness is simply a
defense against the light. If he wer e to let in his light and
choose to r eally e xpress all his love, it would overwhelm his
ego. His meanness is his ar mor, his pr otection against the
light.”
Our defense against light is always some for m of guilt
that we pr oject onto ourselves or others. God can love us
inﬁnitely, the universe can support us unendingly, but until
we agr ee with God’s kind appraisal of us and the universe’s
merciful behavior, we will do everything in our power to
keep the miracles we’r e entitled to at bay . Why the self -
hatred? As we’ve alr eady seen, the ego is our mind’s
endless need to attack itself . And how do we escape this? Through the acceptance of God’s will as our own. God’s will
is that we be happy . God’s will is that we for give ourselves. God’s will is that we ﬁnd our place in Heaven now . It is not our ar rogance but our humility which teaches us
that who we ar e is good enough, and what we have to say is
valid. It is our own self -hatr ed that mak es it diﬃcult for us to
consistently support and nur ture other people, becausesupporting others amounts to supporting ourselves. When I
speak publicly, ther e is a palpably diﬀer ent feeling between
audiences who want me to win, and those who ar e sitting
back signalling, “ Oh yeah? Show  me.” The for mer is a
conte xt in which I am invited to shine, and the latter is one
in which I am challenged to shine. Isn’t life challenging
enough? Is human kindness so lightweight? When we know that love is an inﬁnite r esour ce—that
there is enough abundance of every kind for everyone and
that only what we give to others we get to k eep—then we
stop denigrating other people, and start blessing them
instead. Several years ago I was living in a house with a
teenage girl. One day I came home and she was sitting on
her bed with ﬁve or six girlfriends, sur rounding a poster of
Christie Brinkley . As har d as it is to believe this, these girls
were struggling to mak e a case for the fact that Christie
Brinkley wasn’t r eally all that beautiful, or if she was, she
probably wasn’t all that smart. I gently pointed out to them
that what was r eally going on was that each of them wanted
very much to look just lik e her, but wer e defending against
it because they thought it was impossible. “It’s ok ay for you
to want to be beautiful, too .” I said. “In fact, it’s good, and in
your own ways you can be. The way to do that is to bless
her beauty, praise it, per mit it to be so you can per mit your
own. Christie Brinkley being beautiful doesn’t mean that you
don’t get to be. Ther e’s enough beauty to go ar ound. It’s
just an idea. Anyone can have it. As you bless what she has,
you multiply your chances of having it too .”
A person who succeeds in any ar ea is only cr eating mor e
of a possibility for others to do the same. Holding on to the
thought of ﬁnite r esour ces is a way of holding on to hell. We must lear n to think only divine thoughts. Angels ar e
the thoughts of God, and in Heaven, humans think lik eangels. Angels light the way . Angels do not begrudge
anyone anything, angels do not tear down, angels do not
compete, angels do not constrict their hearts, angels do not
fear. That’s why they sing and that’s how they ﬂy . We, of
course, ar e only angels in disguise. 5. THE END OF THE WORLD
“The end of the world is not its destruction, but
its translation into Heaven .”
The end of the world as we know it wouldn’t be such a
horrible thing, if you think of all the ways in which the world
is full of pain and suﬀering. In the “end days,” we will not
escape the hor rors of the world thr ough vehicles that soar
into outer space, but thr ough vehicles that soar into inner
space. Those vehicles ar e our healed minds, guided by the
Holy Spirit. What does Heaven look lik e? Most of us have only had
tiny glimpses, but those glimpses wer e enough to keep us
always hoping to go back. The Course says ther e’s an
“ancient melody” we all r emember, always beck oning,
always calling us to r eturn. Heaven is our home. It’s wher e
we came fr om. It’s our natural state. We’ve all had Heavenly moments on earth, usually at our
mother’s br east or at someone else’s. Ther e is a feeling of
inner peace that comes fr om total r elinquishment of
judgment. W e don’t feel the need to change others, and we
don’t feel the need to be diﬀer ent than we ar e. We can see,
for whatever r eason, the total beauty of another person,
and we feel that they can see the beauty in us as well.The world sees the special r elationship, whether r omantic
or otherwise, as the only valid conte xt for such an
experience. That is our primary neur osis, our most painful
delusion. W e keep looking to the body for love, but it is not
there. We ‘embark upon an endless sear ch for what we
cannot ﬁnd’—one person, one cir cumstance that holds the
key to Heaven. But Heaven is within us. It has nothing
ultimately to do with the thoughts of someone else, and
everything to do with what we choose to think ourselves,
not just about one person, but about all people. So
forgiveness of mankind, of everyone in every cir cumstance,
is our tick et to Heaven, our only way home. Our goal is God. Nothing short of that goal will bring us
joy. And it is joy to which we ar e entitled. Although we’r e
relatively awar e of the transfor mative power of pain, we
know very little about the transfor mative power of joy
because we know so little about joy at all. Talk of joy is not simplistic. No one is saying that it’s
easy; we’r e just aﬃr ming that it’s our goal. As we’ve alr eady
seen, ther e is no getting to Heaven without acknowledging
hell—not its ultimate r eality, but its r eality for us while we
remain in this illusion. This illusion is very powerful indeed. A Course in Miracles  is not pr oposing emotional denial and
suppr ession of darkness as a way to light. It is a
psychotherapeutic pr ocess by which darkness is br ought to
light—not the other way ar ound. In the enlightened world,
psychotherapy, guided by the Holy Spirit, will certainly have
a place.
_OceanofPDF.com_A_Return_to_Love_-_Marianne_Williamson.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        It will
be as though millions of us ar e stopped at that r ed light,
recognizing our lovelessness and asking that we be healed. When the cur e for AIDS is ﬁnally found, we will give prizes to
a few scientists, but many of us will know that millions and
millions of prayers helped it happen. 4. SA VING THE MIND, SA VING THE BOD Y
“Only salvation can be said to cur e. ”
The e xperience of illness is a call to a genuinely r eligious
life. In that sense, it is for many people one of the best
things that ever happened to them. One of the pr oblems with illness is that it str ongly tempts
us to obsess about the body at the very time when we need
most to concentrate on spirit. It tak es spiritual discipline to
turn that ar ound. Spiritual practice is mental and emotional
exercise, not unlik e physical exercise in the way it works. Through spiritual work we ar e seeking to r ebuild our mental
musculatur e. We achieve so little, says A Course in Miracles,
because we have undisciplined minds. T raining our minds to
think fr om a loving, faithful perspective is the gr eatest boost
we can give to our immune systems, and one of the
greatest challenges we can pose to our minds. Changing our lives can be diﬃcult. F or a person who has
been diagnosed with a physical ailment, the call to change
is imperative. Wher e we used to eat unhealthy foods, we
must now eat healthy ones. Wher e we used to smok e, drink,
or get too little sleep, we must now change those habits. And wher e our minds used to run instinctively in the
directions of fear, paranoia and attack, we must now do
everything possible to train our minds to think diﬀer ently. The body -mind connection might be new to W ester n
science, but it is not new to Easter n medicine, or to the
ﬁelds of r eligion and philosophy. The body has an
intelligence of its own. As Deepak Chopra writes in Quantum
Healing, “Life itself is intelligence riding everywher e on
chemicals. W e mustn’t mak e the mistak e of thinking that
the rider and the horse ar e the same. ” In the traditional
Wester n model of healing, we ar e trying to get the horse to
move in a new dir ection, without considering having a
conversation with the horse’s driver. A spiritual, holistic
notion of healing includes tr eatment not only of the body,
but of the mind and spirit as well. As Chopra writes, “W e
have ultimately arrived at a dramatic shif t in world view. For
the ﬁrst time in the history of science, mind has a visible
scaﬀold to stand upon. Befor e this, science declar ed that weare physical machines that somehow lear ned to think. Now
it dawns that we ar e thoughts that have lear ned to cr eate a
physical machine. ”
Love changes the way we think about our disease. Illness
comes fr om separation, says A Course in Miracles, and
healing comes fr om joining. Of course people hate their
cancer, or hate their AIDS, but the last thing a sick person
needs is something else to hate about themselves. Healing
results fr om a transfor med per ception of our r elationship to
illness, one in which we r espond to the pr oblem with love
instead of fear. When a child pr esents a cut ﬁnger to his or
her mother, the woman doesn’t say, “ Bad cut. ” R ather, she
kisses the ﬁnger, showers it with love in an unconscious,
instinctive activation of the healing pr ocess. Why should we
think diﬀer ently about critical illness. Cancer and AIDS and
other serious illnesses ar e physical manifestations of a
psychic scr eam, and their message is not “ Hate me,” but
“Love me. ”
If I’m yelling, the person in fr ont of me can r eact in one of
two ways. He can yell back, scr eaming at me to shut up, but
this will tend to mak e me scr eam mor e. Or he can tell me
that he car es what my feelings ar e and he loves me and is
sorry that I’m feeling this way, which will tend to quiet me
down. Those ar e our two choices with critical illness. Attacking disease is not a cur e. Attacking a disease only
makes it yell louder. Healing comes fr om entering into a
conversation with our illness, seeking to understand what
it’s trying to tell us. The physician seeks to understand the
chemical alphabet thr ough which illness speaks. The
metaphysician seeks to understand what the illness is trying
to say. Lucifer is seen to have been the most beautiful angel in
Heaven befor e he “ fell. ” In Star W ars, Darth V ader tur ns outto have been a nice guy at an earlier time. Disease is love
turned into fear—our own ener gy, meant to sustain us,
turned against ourselves. Ener gy cannot be destr oyed. Our
job is not to kill disease, but to tur n its ener gy back in the
direction it came fr om—to tur n fear back into love. Visualization has become a popular technique for the
treatment of critical illnesses. P eople of ten visualize a P AC
man, or soldier with a machine gun, setting out to destr oy
the thr eatening cells or virus. But we can tak e a mor e loving
approach. Under neath Darth V ader’s ugly mask lay a r eal
man with a r eal heart. AIDS, for instance, can be thought of
as “Angels-In-Darth V ader-Suits. ”
Here are some enlightened visualizations: Imagine the
AIDS virus as Darth V ader, and then unzip his suit to allow
an angel to emer ge. See the cancer cell or AIDS virus in all
its wounded hor ror, and then see a golden light, or angel, or
Jesus, enveloping the cell and transfor ming it fr om darkness
into light. As we said befor e, a scr eam r esponds best to
love. That is when it calms down. That is when it stops. I have used an inter esting letter -writing technique in my
work, wher e people write a letter to AIDS or cancer or
whatever illness they might have, and tell it everything they
feel. The letter begins,
for instance:
Dear Cancer,
These ar e my honest feelings. ….
The AIDS virus is seen as a manifestation of a psychic scream, and the text suggests that it is a call to love and connection, rather than a threat.
According to the text, what is the true nature of the AIDS virus?
The author does not take a stance on reincarnation, stating that it is not a doctrine of A Course in Miracles, but rather a concept that can be used to foster spiritual growth.
What is the author's view on the concept of reincarnation?
The author views death as an illusion, stating that it is not a physical event, but rather a thought that can be overcome through spiritual practice and acceptance.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of death?
The author suggests that it is essential to shift one's focus from fear and hatred to love and acceptance, and that this can be achieved through spiritual practices such as journaling and meditation.
What is the author's advice for those dealing with a serious illness?
The author argues that true happiness comes from within, and that it is our responsibility to choose to focus on love and positivity, rather than negative thoughts and emotions.
What is the author's stance on the concept of happiness?