BOOK REVIEW

God - the source of all healing

By NORMA LIM DIZON

A Return to Love

Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles

By MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

“Be not afraid, but let your world be lit by miracles.” 

THE BOOK  A Return to Love is about love in its real essence using the spiritual words of the Christian faith and yet interpreted in a non-traditional way through psychological level of understanding.

Author Marianne Williamson discusses how to put into practice the meaning of love not as a kind of doing but accepting who we really are.  From this premise of acknowledgment, we live our life as children of God, of Love and Light.  We are in our inner core, Love. 

A return to love therefore is a return to oneself, our own true self.  We have only one identity and we are all interconnected.  We are like the spokes on a wheel, all radiating out of the same center. 

“Christ” refers to the common thread of divine love that is the core and essence of every human mind, so the love in one of us is the same love in all of us.  Love in our core is energy, an infinite continuum.  We are all part of an infinite love, an indivisible divine mind.

To understand and to live this infinite love, to put into practice or put into life this true being, is a lifetime endeavor.  Each and every one of us has to contend with what we call “ego” which the course in miracles quotes, “The ego is quite literally a fearful thought.”  

 There is fear in every one of us.  Very few people were brought up with unconditional loving or approval.  

Most grew up with admonition to be good, to do better than anybody else, as if our worth is in doing and not in our being.  Accepting “Christ” is a shift in perception, an awakening of our true worth not as finite, isolated creatures but as glorious infinite creative spirits.

Ego is the fear in us and God’s answer to fear is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the consciousness within us to awaken or call us back to who we are.  The Holy Spirit guides us to a different perception than that of the Ego.  The perception to which the Holy Spirit guides us is based on love.  Anything other than love is an illusion.   

The shift from fear to love is a miracle.  The shift from the Ego to the Holy Spirit is a miracle. It does not fix the things of earth it addresses the real source of the problem, which is in the level of consciousness.

To address the world’s problem on any other level other than in consciousness is a temporary remedy, a fix but not a healing, a treatment but not a cure.  Same thing with illness, if it is not addressed from the source there is just a suppression of the symptoms.  Holistic approach in health is to see the person as a total person in mind, body and soul.

The author discusses faith in relation to the quote from the Course in Miracles, “There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve.”  To trust in the force that moves the universe is faith.  Our physical body works at every moment, we were wonderfully made.  There is a built-in movement into the universe and we are all part of the system. 

The universe supports our physical survival.  The symbiotic relationship of plants and animals is given. That is our external support physically.  Internally, the universe supports our emotional, psychological and spiritual well being as well. The internal equivalent of oxygen in order for us to survive is Love.  What is the highest internal law?  That we love one another as God loves us, unconditionally.  Loving unconditionally is not easy.

When we as a people awaken to who we really are, there will be no more sickness, no more wars, no more poverty, no more lack.  We will love one another so that it will be earth as it is in heaven. 

Why?  It is because in the world of bodies we are separate but in the world of spirit, we are all one.  So to have holistic/wholistic (whole) healing, we have to have the awareness that we are more than the body, that we are spirits within the mind of God.  

This correct perception is our healing.  It is not the body that gets sick, but the mind.  Health or sickness of the body depends entirely on how the mind perceives it and the purpose the mind would use it for. 

Williamson says also that forgiveness is the ultimate preventative medicine as well as a great healer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”