“Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.” (Proverbs 3: 25). “...be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (Romans 12: 2). Definition of Paradox: “1) A tenet contrary to received opinion. 2a) a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true. 2b) a self-contradictory statement that at first seems true....” (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition; p. 842; Merriam Webster, Inc., Springfield, MA; 1998). Spiritual healing is the mental activity of realization. Specifically, it's the banishment of the belief in physical reality, for the comprehension of spiritual reality, right where a physical reality appears to be, but is not. Spiritual healing only becomes possible for those who've already concluded that this whole material existence is not what it seems, and certainly not all there is. No one else would even approach such a form of healing, as long as the universe of physical form is still too concrete and real to their thought. My own deliverance from a human 'condition' brought to my understanding, in wonderful clarity, what I've since called the paradox of spiritual healing. Briefly, it is the comprehension that in one's true identity, (our universal Christ identity) no healing is ever necessary. Despite whatever seems wrong with us physically, whatever pain, symptoms, or ghastly fleshly appearances we're experiencing, actual healing isn't necessary because our true identity, which is spiritual and not fleshly, contains no faulty condition to be rid of. This entire Self is perfectly whole in body and mind, safe and sound forever, right where we are mis-identifying ourselves as fleshly beings, with problems. The paradox became clearer to my understanding from the affliction of panic attacks that occurred in my twenties and early thirties. These sudden, panicky episodes were one of the most tormenting experiences of my life. I was often a self-imposed prisoner in my own house, fearful of driving or being around people who would 'discover' my weakness and affliction. Being in the house, preferably alone, was my comfort zone, where I could ride out any such attack without calling attention or embarrassment to myself. Today, the name which world belief has given to such attacks is 'agoraphobia.' Worldly attention has been called to this mental condition, since it seems to be a common occurrence in our society and others, particularly, but not exclusively, for women. There are varying reasons given for such a mental condition, but all rely upon the concept of human identity. For example, this condition claims to be a mental disorder of the physical mind. Thus, it seemed to belong to me; to be part of who I was—therefore the logical conclusion came that I must find out what was causing it and rid myself of it. If I had a mental disease, I had to be healed of it. So, for a long while, I tried to find a specific, spiritual truth that I thought would mentally heal the claim of a sick mind—that is, a physical mind that seemed to be sick and in need of healing. But the mental activity I required was not to search frantically for some specific spiritual truth that might be alluding me, like the proverbial needle in a haystack. Knowing specific spiritual truths is important; yet, I soon realized that the only mental activity we need do is to rightly identify ourself and accept the truth of spiritual wholeness and health, right where the imperfect, physical body or mind seems to be. We must fulfill the wholeness and health that God placed and maintains, right there, within our true being. We must 'put on the Christ'. We must change our identity just as we would change our clothes. For only in this re-identification, when we understand who we really are (God's spiritual children) and where we really are (the spiritual kingdom of God), the belief in a physical self needing healing is vanquished. Our true and only being, our spiritual selfhood, is still safe and sound within God's loving care, including body, soul and mind. Nothing has ever gone wrong with us, in our true identity, to need healing. Our invisible, spiritual selfhood, with all its wholeness and perfection, remains to be called forth. So, in my own case of panic attacks, the healing in the human scene came, one Sunday in church, as I huddled down in the back row, near the door, ready to bolt if I felt the panic coming. As I sat in this state of readiness, I asked, nay, begged God to enlighten me with whatever I needed. I'd done this before, of course, with no effect. God seemed to be withholding some distinct truth from me, that I desperately felt I needed. But while in church on that Sunday, something else whispered to me through the usual fear. First, if I recall correctly, this mental voice told me to stop such wrong thinking about God, as if something was being withheld from me, and remember what Christ Jesus had said about trust: “And all things, whatsoever things ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” (Matthew 21: 22). I took this to mean that, when I ask the divine Intelligence to show me the way of healing this type of affliction, I must then absolutely believe that I already have the way—stop waiting for it and know it's already with me. So, that's what I did for several minutes. I mentally declared that God had never withheld truth, or any good thing from me. Although I'd suffered these panic attacks for all those years, my suffering wasn't from God; it was my own misunderstanding of things, such as who I really was (God's image and likeness) and where I really was (the spiritual and harmonious kingdom of God). Next, the thoughts came that the awareness of God's ever-presence IS the truth. God is the only Creator, and only the identities of God exist anywhere in creation. My only identity was and always is the identity God created and knows—not the identity this world has conned me into believing. My true body and mind is never afflicted at all. That IS the healing—separate myself from the false, material identity, and fulfill my identity as God's own off-spring, where no affliction exists. SEE the Christ Self. Fulfill the Christ Self. Correct the definition or identity of myself. See my true mind, upheld by God, where no fear can hide. I could refuse fear and not attach it to me. Don't fear fear itself. (This is my remembrance of the ideas coming to me, though they may not be worded perfectly.) As I meditated on this, the light suddenly went on. I realized that our spiritual mind, the One divine Mind of all, can have no fears or phobias, of any name or nature. I had no personal, physical mind to go wrong. The divine Intelligence we call God is the ONLY intelligence that IS truth and intelligence. Material cells can't have intelligence. All knowledge, other than divine, is non-sense. My one and only mind wasn't sick; my mind was the image of God. It was filled with the Intelligence of God. My mind, and the mind of all, is the spiritual consciousness that exists, right where a material sense of 'mind' or consciousness seems to exist, but doesn't. Mind is a spiritual thing. Body is a spiritual thing. Material forms are only our limited concepts of these things, and physical concepts are mortal from their beginning. We must not die out of life, but let these false concepts of Self die. Then we find our eternal life, health and wholeness, when we rightly identify it as spiritual, living within God's own infinite being, as one of Its children (identities). I remember, on that day, feeling as if a great weight had finally lifted from my shoulders. I finally got it! I could actually see the truth of it. The paradox was evident! I didn't have to heal a mind; God was the Source and substance of my mind, and it was already perfect. It was the false, material sense of mind that seemed to be afraid, for irrational and unknown reasons—that part of me that still believed in a material self. But that false sense didn't really belong to me. I just thought it did. This panic and fear had nothing to do with my true being. It had never belonged to me, even though I'd thought, for years, that it did. What did I care, any longer, if feelings of fear or panic came over me? I wouldn't be afraid of sudden fear any longer, for I now could see its nothingness in the allness of God and my real Self as God's off-spring. I knew fear to only result from a false sense of existence. When driving home, I felt the seeds of panic begin, but I wasn't even worried. I just pulled over to the curb to let it pass if and when it came, but the panic attack never materialized. That was the last of it. Once I had denied it as part of me, it didn't repeat again. For the next couple of months, now and then, the suggestion would come that I might have a panic attack, but I quickly declared my Christ Consciousness, filled with all spiritual truth of God's love and eternal laws of mental health, and soon even the suggestions quit coming. Mental and physical disease doesn't exist in spiritual being. My real mind had never had any fear. The paradox had been fulfilled; I was finally 'healed', as soon as I realized that, because of God's allness, there was nothing to heal in all Its spiritual, and only, creation. God is the only power, and that power upholds all creation forever. The healing transformation from afflictions (the demonstration of spiritual healing in what seems to be our physical body and mind) does occur humanly or 'in the flesh', just as soon as one comprehends that there can be nothing in the true Self that ever needs healing. It won't take place before that mental shift. Again, this is the paradox to watch for: we are healed once we actually comprehend and realize that there's nothing to heal. Spiritually, the healing is already done, since no lapse from wholeness ever actually occurs in the Intelligence and keeping of the Creator. Cause and effect is spiritual, not material. No laws of matter actually exist in the kingdom of God, whose laws of eternal harmony are spiritual. Thus, since we aren't physical in the first place, we can't be physically sick or damaged in the second place. Only the illusion of material being, and our own acceptance of it, must be confronted. Once this realization dawns from within our divine, spiritual consciousness, both our human sense of mind and human sense of the body, responds. Then, and only then, does our false-sense of body and mind (the physical form) change back to resemble our spiritual state of being—wholeness and health. But nothing has changed in reality; material form has nothing to do with spiritual reality. Only our material beliefs have to be changed, since only these beliefs have produced the appearances and experiences of disease and death. I believe that the saving message Christ Jesus brought to sick and sinning humanity was this: Any sense of separation from God's presence and love is always material illusion. No one and nothing God created ever 'fell from grace' or was harmed in any way, needing healing. All are everlastingly whole, sound, and alive. No one ever really 'fell' out of God's care. It's only human belief and education that has taught otherwise. But it is the belief in good and evil as real that produces the ills that the flesh seems to inherit; for in God's creation, good has no opposite called evil, neither in cause nor effect. God created good alone. Despite this spiritual blindness of humanity, God's kingdom is still ever-present, along with our own place in it, just needing to be perceived. This was proven in the healing practice of Christ Jesus in, “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.”(Matthew 4: 23). When John the Baptist sent messengers to Jesus to find out if he was the saving Christ who was to come, the Bible states,“Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” (Matthew 11: 4, 5). No physical imperfection or evidence of non-life was permitted to stand before the understanding of Christ Jesus, which even his disciples learned to practice. God wasn't punishing us with sickness, death, or any evil. Evil manifestations on this material plane of existence occur due to material beliefs about God and life...beliefs that the Master tried to correct in the thoughts of all who followed him. This fleshly sense of self will always experience suffering, until we learn to put on, fully, our own Christ identity. (The 'Christ' is used here to mean the spiritual self instead of a fleshly Adam or Eve self). To the false, physical sense of a self, we seem to feel the physical body, for pleasure and pain. We seem to manifest many troublesome things in our limited time on this material plane of thought. Even so, and if one can accept this notion, the physical appearances of sickness and death have nothing to do with us, no matter how much we seem to feel pain, see evil, and experience discomfort. Everlasting life in God's spiritual essence assures us that no one was ever really sick, or has ever really died in spiritual reality. That these evils appear real on this material-sense plane of existence will continue until the last material belief (belief in a creator and creation other than God's) is banished from consciousness, individually or collectively. Spiritual healing, alone, heals humanity of such evils, not just in symptoms, but in the return to wholeness which denies all ability to be sick. Conditions such as agoraphobia aren't the only false conditions that claim to attach and belong to us as fleshly creatures. In today's world, I wish all those who suffer from the belief that their mind is losing substance (material cells) in the condition called 'alzheimer's' could realize just for a moment, that neither mind, nor its functions can be lost, since God is the Intelligence of the only Mind in the universe. No one has a physical mind to lose or protect. Realization of this could restore to functioning one's everlasting memory, since, as with all the immortal properties God has bestowed upon Its image and likeness, memory is everlasting. To lose one's memory, one would have to lose God; but this can't happen, since, “In him, we live and move and have our being;”(Acts 17: 28). Our Christ Selfhood is our oneness with God, where we're always in our right Mind. Yet, just as a sleeper dreaming away the hours doesn't remember waking reality, in this human condition, (where we seemed to be both spirit and matter) our memory of heavenly facts and spiritual reality eludes us, until we begin to awaken to spiritual reality. What we dearly need, in this world of material thinking, is a way of remembering our true identity, by calling it forth from the Christ Consciousness within. Universally speaking, the entire truth and understanding of spiritual being is already within the universal Christ Consciousness (the divine consciousness at the center of being); and, thus, our fully awakened Self knows too much to even believe in such a thing as physical existence, disease, or mortality. It knows the allness of God, Spirit. So no lie of material existence wipes out this truth—truth is true, whether or not we're knowing it at the time. All the people we meet, as well as ourselves, are really the children of God, even if they don't know it and are acting out the material, more flawed, sense of identity. Every place we go is really the kingdom of God, governed by divine love and law, even though we don't recognize the place as yet, because we are each expressing so many negative behaviors. Every small step we take, evidenced by healing of some physical claim of illness, poverty, discord, makes us stronger and closer to our complete deliverance from this material sense of mortal, physical life, which hides our eternal life in Spirit. Each individual on this material, mental plane of existence will transform back to spiritual harmony and experience, in direct proportion to the transforming of his or her thoughts about identity, from the material to the spiritual sense of existence. In short, we don't have to wait for health, harmony or God's care to reach us. Our eternal memory is already here, waiting to be called forth, from our Christ identity within. The paradox of knowing we don't need healing (because, in spiritual truth, we're already healed) will eventually 'heal' the appearance of every human ill that hides our spiritual glory, safely tucked away in God.
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